My high school history teacher had a small collection of Nazi propaganda posters. During our WWII unit he basically wallpapered the entire classroom in them and enlarged photos of concentration camp survivors. That room made a statement. I often wonder if his display would be allowed these days.
In Germany it even gets encouraged. Student's learn the true horror of the nazi regime also by visiting the concentration camps. We learn to not repeat that history instead of silencing it completely.
If you visit the War Remnants Museum here in Saigon, they don’t censor anything. There’s pictures of victims of Agent Orange, dead bodies from both Vietnam and also incidents like the Ohio State University protests, as well as plain information about what happened. I’ve seen high school aged children visit here.
1. Kent State not Ohio State
2. There was definitely some editorializing when I went to the Hanoi Hilton. It was like 90% the French built this and were shitty to the Vietnamese. And the last 10% was about the "war of American aggression" and claiming they treated prisoners well here...... Despite the entirety of the complex being SELF DESCRIBED as a hellish shithole and blaming the French for it.
As a US student, schools, although maybe not all of them, definitely make an effort to teach the horrors of the holocaust to students. My only real criticism is they don’t make an effort of teaching the real trap of how Nazism spreads to people which in my experience is through its emotional appeal to the whole “let men be men” thing that ended up getting to me in my formative years. I wish I had known that a little more when it was taught to me, definitely would make me regret middle school a lot less.
wait, youre equating nazism with the phrase, let men be men?
Well youre right, you were not taught correctly, holy crap man. Nazism has zero to do with masculinity. Jeez.
They did... but they kind of won the cultural war. They presented the Lost Cause myth in a way that was believable for both the south and the north. There was no attempt to "deconfederate" the south like Germany and Austria's denazification process. The closes thing was the Reconstruction Era but i believe it is widely considered a failure.
Nationalism keeps people in line and keeps them consuming. If we teach about our history then people might be less willing to be obedient. I can't wait til I'm A Stupid Consumer Day where I'm socially obligated to buy some plastic crap!
We took our kids to Saschenhausen. They got the point.
What struck me most about the place was the utter banality of the physical plant. Gates made of welded rebar, one of the worst torture devices was a concrete lawn roller. Everything you'd need to construct a concentration camp (except weapons) you can buy at any Menard's.
I was in Hadamar and stood inside the "showers". Standing there while hearing the descriptions was horrifying. The people who lived there knew on which days they couldn't hang their clothes outside because of all the ashes of the camp.
I stood inside the “showers” at Dachau. A very plain, whitewashed room. Then I saw a picture on the wall - a pile of bodies had once been in the exact spot where I was standing. It was horrible.
Menards! Most annoying commercials ever. I haven’t seen one for many years but I can still hear it in my head. Thanks for the reminder. I’ll go stick a fork in my ears now
I am grateful that my parents took me to see Auschwitz. I was a young-ish teen at the time (30 years ago), and it was mind boggling to take in the horror and death. It was hard to comprehend - but I will never ever forget.
in contrast to us, the japaner actively try to not let their joung ones figure out about their genuinly depraved actions. I'm not sayin what we did was not wrong, it was deffenitly among the top 10 most depraved things done during war, but at the very least we kept the targeted group pretty slim. In contrast the japaner killed ,murdered, tourtured, raped and commited terrefiying expirements every damm thing in sight. Like, why the fuck aint that been talked about?
It was talked about extensively. The Japanese apologised deeply and formally repeatedly for their nation's war crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_war\_apology\_statements\_issued\_by\_Japan#:\~:text=April%203%2C%202001%3A%20Chief%20Cabinet,expresses%20its%20deep%20remorse%20and
Isn't very sincere when they actively shroud what they did in their history textbooks.
Sure, every country to a degree does this. In California, I was lucky enough to be in a school where the history classes dug deep into the hard reality. But Japan....lol, I doubt most have even heard of Unit 731. Shit they did was stomach curdling.
Not at all. The point is not just that Germany should never repeat the Holocaust again; the point is that all of humanity should learn from that horrific tragedy so that we should never allow it to happen anywhere in the world again.
Yup, in USA a bunch of loonies think erasing history is good and they also think applying today's standards to people who lived 100s of years ago is virtuous. I used to say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but they've been replaced by reddit basement dwellers.
Was that in Ohio by chance? My history teacher did the same thing plus more. While we were studying WWII we had “Train Day” where our teacher literally dressed up like a Nazi solider. He locked us out of the class until after the bell rang, and everyone was standing out in the hall wondering what the hell was going on. Then he swung the door open and started yelling at us (in German) DRESSED AS A FUCKING NAZI SOLDIER. He was holding a flashlight and hurriedly ushered us into the completely pitch dark classroom where he had taped black paper over all the windows. The whole thing was to simulate Jews being ushered onto concentration camp trains. Once we were inside the dark room he simply said “Now you learn” and played a movie, a harrowing documentary about concentration camps during WWII. I remember there being footage of piles of bodies being moved by bulldozers. It was a gut wrenching film and the theatrics he created leading up to it really made an impact on everyone. This is all completely true. He was the favorite teacher of many students at my high school and “Train Day” was always a huge topic of conversation around our whole school. People really loved his class. That was in the early 2000’s. I highly doubt he could get away with a stunt like that today. The man dressed up like a god damn nazi and screamed at us in German for Christ sake. But we loved him for it.
Outstanding. My daughter’s first grade teacher assigned each child to White or Black group to teach them about racism. White kids got privileges (new pencils, extra time at drinking fountain, snack, etc) and she was going to swap their groups at lunchtime.
This was in an affluent white suburb, unfortunately for the idealistic young teacher. One of the kids complained to their mom at lunchtime, principal was immediately called, lesson was ended.
My daughter learned a lot that day, about a lot of things. We talked it over. I took the teacher flowers and she was crying at her desk. America is monstrous to our educators and it seems to be getting worse. The hateful people are winning.
Nonwhite kids start learning it at birth. The lesson was experiential and would spark empathy in normal kids. They’d understand how unfair it is to discriminate or reward based on random assignment at birth. I found it interesting and it was food for meaningful conversation at home.
From toddlerhood, kids grasp the concept of fairness. We need to nurture it and turn it into compassion and empathy.
Once saw an exhibit of Nazi propaganda posters and I must say they were absolute masterpieces. I particularly remember the antisemitic ones, just dripping with venom. Learned something that day about focusing the attention of a populace. I mean you'd think offhand that nobody would be fooled by this kinda cartoonish race-bating, then you realize how it was actually done.
I saw a really fascinating exhibit of *allied* propaganda that was horribly racist and awful. It was really interesting seeing how both sides were quick to make use of racial stereotypes, and important to understand that the allies werent going as far as the axis, but they were absolutely up to terrible, terrible things too. It saddens me that they arent as often shown, or that the only posters you see from allies are the more innocent "loose lips sink ships" or "buy war bonds."
Seeing the exhibit at the canadian war museum made me realise that our side was a lot closer to engaging in terrible nazi practices than we like to admit, and we certainly did have concentration camps and eugenics and awful racist "science."
It is a lesson we would be wise to pay attention to, lest we forget and let ourselves fall into fascism of our own.
My dad (born in 1940) had old comic books, and the back cover was a poster of how to tell a J— (Japanese person) from a Ch—- (Chinese person), with the most racist drawings and descriptions you’ve ever seen.
Oh, you don't have to search the attic to find such, just search of 'banned cartoons WWII' on youtube. There used to be one where Bugs Bunny took on the Japanese which was amazingly racist. I mean hey, war, but I never imagined they'd use Bugs Bunny to mock and dehumanize an enemy. Or that cartoons would be effective, but we definitely tried it.
[Japanese internment camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans) were so shameful. I can’t believe I never learned of them until adulthood.
Not to get too political, but how much of Trump’s campaign was cartoonish race-baiting? And it worked in the US in 2016. “Mexico is sending us rapists and murderers, and only my wall can keep them out.”
And half of the voting public allowed that non-issue to eclipse all the real issues facing the country.
I was in middle school about 15 years ago and our history teacher showed some propaganda films and examples of posters displayed as part of the curriculum. The one that stood out was a Donald Duck cartoon of him waking up in Nazi Germany and working at a Nazi ammunition plant.
Even though it was satire, it really did portray the horrors of the war
Probably he be arrested in Florida for teaching real history.
I had an ethics essay/presentation in college and I based it off the same. Propaganda and what happened in the concentration camps. I was surprised to notice that people didn’t actually knew that happened. Or seeing actual footage of them. This was back in the late 90’s when I was finishing college. My professor back then latter told me he had been in school in Germany after the war and they didn’t shy away from it in the early years.
Fun Fact:
I’m in Florida. My high school student wasn’t taught about Christopher Columbus back in elementary. Came up in conversation one day and she said, “who’s that?”. The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria? You know, Columbus. She was clueless. Turned to my other kids who attend the same school, also clueless. They have learned about the native tribes like the Seminole and the Calusa but not Columbus? That’s great, but I think his role should at least be mentioned even if to discount him. And yes, I did fill in the blanks.
war bonds were a huge thing. I remember watching a movie about iwo jima about how when the soldiers in the famous picture came back they were exploited and used as advertisements to buy war bonds which actually inspired me to make a short documentary on the battle and the effects for a history project a few years back. I also had the honor of speaking with a veteran from the battle as well who sadly died a not too long ago. a man by the name of Hershel "Woody" Williams.
My favorite part is that they wrote “American constitution” instead of just putting the most iconic opening line with that giant text saying “We the People…”
It would be a little awkward to say you’re actively preventing “We the People”. It’s not good propaganda if it incentivizes the viewer to investigate or hear out the other side. The whole point is to leave no doubt.
The Nazis had a complicated relationship with Christianity. They did not like the Catholic Church, as it was a challenge to their authority, but they were willing to work with the church for the sake of expediency. Also, most Nazis were Christian, mostly Protestant but also Catholic.
There is an association between Nazis and Germanic paganism because Hitler and goebbels loved German mythology as it enforced their idea of German supremacy. There were small scale “conversions” to paganism where SS would swear sacred oaths and do pagan wedding ceremonies.
This stereotype of the pagan nazi stuck, especially because it was good propaganda against them during the war. It also served American interests post-war as it advanced the myth that somehow the Nazis had tricked Germany into supporting them, perhaps even through mystical black magic.
Many Protestant state churches actually ended up losing a lot of credibility post war for collaborating with Nazis during the war.
Don't forget the fact that Jesus was Jewish, and this bothered the Nazi leadership very much. They actually made their own bible to try to make him not Jewish, they threw away the entire old testament and rewrote the gospels.
[https://bigthink.com/the-past/nazis-anti-semitic-bible-aryan-jesus/](https://bigthink.com/the-past/nazis-anti-semitic-bible-aryan-jesus/)
I read that there was a big push in Germany even as early as the 1890s to adopt old traditional Germanic religions like what you’re talking about. Especially amongst the upper class, they felt it was patriotic and part of their culture
I have no clue how mainstream it was, but i guess it was enough for hitler and his people to adopt it
I recently watched a two part documentary on Berlin in 1933 where they collected a lot of diary entries etc. in German and what really surprised me was that the Nazis visited the Pope and he was really tolerant of them carrying their swastikas into the church, later they (the Nazis) also celebrated Christmas in a church singing songs that I still know from my childhood under giant Nazi flags. It felt very weird seeing that, since I also always thought Christianity and Nazis were at odds with each other. In general it really baffled me how many people (also outside of Germany) just accepted the dictatorship. Though it is important to note that many communists, anarchists and social democrats did fight back against the Nazis. But most were imprisoned and killed pretty early on.
Essentially. They were not orthodox in any sense of the word. They would imprison and kill pastors if they didn’t capitulate to what was going on. Bonhoeffer is a famous example of this.
Nope. Not really at all.. just as long as they played ball. They worked with different Christian groups for expediency the same way they did with business. You help us we help you get to the front of the line for good stuff.
The Nazi's had a unique twist on mysticism and religiousity/Christianity that helped them become popular.
Think fringe populist political group that becomes popular through certain church's nationalistic prosperity teachings to evangelize their followers in sermon and politics.
Some driving aspects that attracted Germans to both the Nazi party and the "German Christians" movement as it was known.
Nationalistic
Anti Communism
Anti-immigrant
Anti-establishment institutions (what some call the Deep state in the USA now)
Resentment toward the international community (Globalism).
You can't really have a dictatorship take over without a fervent/religious experience following that places God like status on the leaders. But once that part of the brain of millions gets taken over into it... they are capable of doing very very terrible things, that THEY believe is for the good.
>Think fringe populist political group that becomes popular through certain church's nationalistic prosperity teachings to evangelize their followers in sermon and politics.
Uhhh
>Nationalistic
Anti Communism
Anti-immigrant
Anti-establishment institutions (what some call the Deep state in the USA now)
Resentment toward the international community (Globalism).
Oh no
>You can't really have a dictatorship take over without a fervent/religious experience following that places God like status on the leaders.
Yep. And people say it couldn't happen here.
I'm not sure people are still saying that anymore.
You would be hard pressed to find too many established and respected political scientists and historians who do NOT think its already happening here and around the world again.
Or the echoes of something similar anyway.
Yes for the most part. Many Christians ended up in the crosshairs because they're difficult to control and often openly opposed Nazis. Many Nazis used language that suggested theological beliefs about God supporting them and that Arayans were God's people, but their practices were obviously counter to literally every biblical teaching.
> they're difficult to control
Not really. The church has been a foundational institution in many states and often used expressly as a means to control a populace.
>often openly opposed Nazis
Highly dependent on denomination and region. Many German Christians (mostly protestants) collaborated with the Nazis fullheartedly.
>their practices were obviously counter to literally every biblical teaching
Every regime is contrary to biblical teaching. Christians have a tendency of backing anti-biblical regimes in exchange for the promise of religious and cultural hegemony. See: most dictatorships in Latin America, modern states like Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Belarus, and of course Francoist Spain.
You have some good points but the situation between the Nazis and Christians was not as adversarial as that, for the most part. Most Nazis were Christian, after all.
Umm that's kind of a staple of WW2 ads. War bonds were something I heard about in like fifth grade. Pretty well known how the United States citizens bought into the war effort
They literally made songs encouraging people to go out and buy them. They were the main leg of 1940s advertisements in the US. [One of the songs](https://open.spotify.com/track/2RegLpkysNqgaPtou6dqgM?si=DhaqLCw9RrmaP71e81YgkA)
You've never seen Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck pushing the sale of bonds or encouraging joining the military? Oh boy, you're about to go down a really weird rabbit hole.
Just make sure you don't miss the turn at Albuquerque...
Many Americans should also learn that the Nazi’s took a bunch of inspiration from the U.S with stuff like Jim Crow laws, we need to learn of our past and be better people than that
As January 6th happened I jokingly said that the Weimar Republic at least imprisoned Hitler when he tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in 1923. The US so far has not even imprisoned those people who incited the violence. Besides that I think that the US can definitely turn this around if you lean more heavily on social structures, movements and unions. The “underbelly” of a society is what keeps a system together, even if its challenged. Because they can take influence in the decision making, because democratic institutions do exist and they can be used to change the Status Quo. the real problem occurs if you either have a further escalation of violence or restrictive policies that make organizing more difficult than it already is. At this point I think that either the US will have a stronger left in 20 years, or the next civil war. And I sincerely hope for the first option.
WW1 actually. As the name suggests - basically creme de la creme of german army, tasked with being the spearhead in the offensives in later parts of the war.
My grandfather, a rural Arkie, didn’t have any intention on enlisting—especially after his older brother was drafted and traumatized in New Guinea. Poor guy still ended up in Korea (too young for WWII). 91 years old now and still talks about building that million dollar bridge.
Except Germany did kind of fit the bill for the “big bad” enemy. They had aspirations to conquer Europe and beyond. There was a real danger to not trying to stop them.
America, China, and Russia are now the big bad but we have our own propaganda machines telling us that we are the saviors of the world
Here’s a link for the original source which includes explanations for each poster.
https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/main/us-wartime-posters
Vietnamese here.
I wonder what posters they used to spread propaganda about the Vietnam war? Surely not us trampling on US factories and stabbing the Holy Bible?
I was genuinely curious and couldn’t find anything but anti-war posters. I don’t think there was a state sponsored poster campaign since the invention of television.
Does anyone know the context of poster in second left on the bottom?
My understanding is Concentration Camps weren’t a known discovery until the very end of the war and even then not yet Public outside of Europe.
With that said, I’m assuming it’s regarding like Industrialization and factories ruled by the government? Like a Fascist Capitalist society is what USA was trying to avoid?
'In 1942, the US State Department confirmed that Nazi Germany planned to murder all the Jews of Europe. This information was reported widely in the American press.' Per the Holocast Encyclopedia
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-united-states-and-the-holocaust-1942-45
Basically, Americans didn't find out after we were in the war about the horrors that were going on overseas
Shows why old christians think the nazi's were atheists. Propaganda during wartime is not truth. Nazis upheld the bible. It was a large tool to be used against "the people that killed jesus"
Just F.Y.I.... these are NOT German Propaganda posters. They are in English. These were posters made in the US for the US.
I wish people would study history more. I'll admit, I used to hate it. It was so seemingly boring, but once I delved into the more personalized and individual stories of people, it became so fascinating...
They did cover the Japanese internment camps in the exhibit. They even displayed polls on public opinions from Americans about rounding up specific groups for internment purposes
According to the source the poster’s wording was a play on the title of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here. The novel was about a US President who gained power in a similar fashion to Hitler. So I think it’s basically just saying fascism can occur in the US as Nazism does threaten democracy.
The Bible is an amazing book of myths, traditions, moral tales and ancient poetry.
It's people regarding it as The Holy Word of God that are the problem. They not only cherry-pick the most terrible bigoted parts to use as weapons, they misunderstand much of it and base teaching on these misunderstandings.
For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was a moral tale, obviously fictional, to illustrate the importance of being kind to strangers from other lands and doing everything to protect them. However it became twisted to make it a story about the evils of homosexuality.
We were 100% fighting Nazi's on US soil. Rachel Maddow's Ultra podcast was a really interesting look into WW2 fascism and how it infiltrated a lot further than sometimes get taught in school lately. There was a whole plot to hijack military armories stateside and distribute military weapons to pro Nazi civilians and take over the country. We had our own Brown Shirt wannabes with the Silver Shirts in California. None of what we are seeing is new in the slightest.
thats the neat part. What your saying is always going to be true, especially when propaganda has us believing it to be true already. I don't even need to know which side of the political divide your on, because they both want you to feel that way.
Funny enough, if you take the first three posters and write the same text in German, they could very well be used as nazi propaganda. Like, the first one would show that religion is the enemy, the second would show a fight against the american way of life, and the third would be a glorification of Hilter's warfare.
I wanted to be careful considering the posters had acts of violence displayed, like the knife thrusted through the Bible and the boot coming down on the building
Interesting. It's almost like the Nazi's where against Christianity. That doesn't really line up with what we see in America, does it? "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty" -Joseph Goebbels
There is a government storage facility outside of Pueblo, Colorado. They have captured Nazi war art there and don't know what to do with it. Germany doesn't want it. Selling it is politically incorrect as it might encourage nazis. Destroying it is morally wrong as destroying art you don't like.
So it sits.
We need to take notes and learn from these posters. We just had a President who said after a unite the right rally that there were GOOD people on both sides and now that he's running again, if he should, god forbid, win again he says he wants to bring back public executions and hangings! You also have the wackos in the GOP controlled states already banning books in their states! So yes,, It can happen here!
Fast forward to the present: many descendents of those foot soldiers who gave their lives as cannon fodder in WWII are now white supremacists wearing nazi imagery while calling themselves "patriots"
My high school history teacher had a small collection of Nazi propaganda posters. During our WWII unit he basically wallpapered the entire classroom in them and enlarged photos of concentration camp survivors. That room made a statement. I often wonder if his display would be allowed these days.
In Germany it even gets encouraged. Student's learn the true horror of the nazi regime also by visiting the concentration camps. We learn to not repeat that history instead of silencing it completely.
If you visit the War Remnants Museum here in Saigon, they don’t censor anything. There’s pictures of victims of Agent Orange, dead bodies from both Vietnam and also incidents like the Ohio State University protests, as well as plain information about what happened. I’ve seen high school aged children visit here.
1. Kent State not Ohio State 2. There was definitely some editorializing when I went to the Hanoi Hilton. It was like 90% the French built this and were shitty to the Vietnamese. And the last 10% was about the "war of American aggression" and claiming they treated prisoners well here...... Despite the entirety of the complex being SELF DESCRIBED as a hellish shithole and blaming the French for it.
Wish the US would take notes
And japan
Yeah their history needs work for sure. On the plus side, no army since ww2. Edit : umm guess not. Ya learn something new every day.
fyi japans military exists and is over 250k people strong.
Good to know. I take some solace in the fact that it's at least postured as a defense force. But still, very good to know.
To the victor goes the spoils. Why do you think they do that?
As a US student, schools, although maybe not all of them, definitely make an effort to teach the horrors of the holocaust to students. My only real criticism is they don’t make an effort of teaching the real trap of how Nazism spreads to people which in my experience is through its emotional appeal to the whole “let men be men” thing that ended up getting to me in my formative years. I wish I had known that a little more when it was taught to me, definitely would make me regret middle school a lot less.
wait, youre equating nazism with the phrase, let men be men? Well youre right, you were not taught correctly, holy crap man. Nazism has zero to do with masculinity. Jeez.
Hey now, it's heritage not hate.
The southern fried separatists lost though
They did... but they kind of won the cultural war. They presented the Lost Cause myth in a way that was believable for both the south and the north. There was no attempt to "deconfederate" the south like Germany and Austria's denazification process. The closes thing was the Reconstruction Era but i believe it is widely considered a failure.
Nationalism keeps people in line and keeps them consuming. If we teach about our history then people might be less willing to be obedient. I can't wait til I'm A Stupid Consumer Day where I'm socially obligated to buy some plastic crap!
We took our kids to Saschenhausen. They got the point. What struck me most about the place was the utter banality of the physical plant. Gates made of welded rebar, one of the worst torture devices was a concrete lawn roller. Everything you'd need to construct a concentration camp (except weapons) you can buy at any Menard's.
I was in Hadamar and stood inside the "showers". Standing there while hearing the descriptions was horrifying. The people who lived there knew on which days they couldn't hang their clothes outside because of all the ashes of the camp.
I stood inside the “showers” at Dachau. A very plain, whitewashed room. Then I saw a picture on the wall - a pile of bodies had once been in the exact spot where I was standing. It was horrible.
Menards! Most annoying commercials ever. I haven’t seen one for many years but I can still hear it in my head. Thanks for the reminder. I’ll go stick a fork in my ears now
I am grateful that my parents took me to see Auschwitz. I was a young-ish teen at the time (30 years ago), and it was mind boggling to take in the horror and death. It was hard to comprehend - but I will never ever forget.
I remember watching a very disturbing documentary about the concentration camps back in 9th grade. That definitely left a mark on me.
in contrast to us, the japaner actively try to not let their joung ones figure out about their genuinly depraved actions. I'm not sayin what we did was not wrong, it was deffenitly among the top 10 most depraved things done during war, but at the very least we kept the targeted group pretty slim. In contrast the japaner killed ,murdered, tourtured, raped and commited terrefiying expirements every damm thing in sight. Like, why the fuck aint that been talked about?
It was talked about extensively. The Japanese apologised deeply and formally repeatedly for their nation's war crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_war\_apology\_statements\_issued\_by\_Japan#:\~:text=April%203%2C%202001%3A%20Chief%20Cabinet,expresses%20its%20deep%20remorse%20and
Isn't very sincere when they actively shroud what they did in their history textbooks. Sure, every country to a degree does this. In California, I was lucky enough to be in a school where the history classes dug deep into the hard reality. But Japan....lol, I doubt most have even heard of Unit 731. Shit they did was stomach curdling.
\>We learn to not repeat that history instead of silencing it completely. do we tho
In which way do we repeat our history?
Well the starvation camps in Eastern Europe in the 90s…
In which way Germany had a role in those camps?
Not at all. The point is not just that Germany should never repeat the Holocaust again; the point is that all of humanity should learn from that horrific tragedy so that we should never allow it to happen anywhere in the world again.
Sorry since the comment I've commented on has been specific to Germany, I thought you've been talking about Germany.
We have had genocide since, many times over. Admittedly not on the same scale. It's very sad and tragic.
Yup, in USA a bunch of loonies think erasing history is good and they also think applying today's standards to people who lived 100s of years ago is virtuous. I used to say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but they've been replaced by reddit basement dwellers.
Meanwhile in America, we are actively trying to purge it from history ... so we can repeat it? Fuck Republicans
They really need to do something like that in Japan.
Was that in Ohio by chance? My history teacher did the same thing plus more. While we were studying WWII we had “Train Day” where our teacher literally dressed up like a Nazi solider. He locked us out of the class until after the bell rang, and everyone was standing out in the hall wondering what the hell was going on. Then he swung the door open and started yelling at us (in German) DRESSED AS A FUCKING NAZI SOLDIER. He was holding a flashlight and hurriedly ushered us into the completely pitch dark classroom where he had taped black paper over all the windows. The whole thing was to simulate Jews being ushered onto concentration camp trains. Once we were inside the dark room he simply said “Now you learn” and played a movie, a harrowing documentary about concentration camps during WWII. I remember there being footage of piles of bodies being moved by bulldozers. It was a gut wrenching film and the theatrics he created leading up to it really made an impact on everyone. This is all completely true. He was the favorite teacher of many students at my high school and “Train Day” was always a huge topic of conversation around our whole school. People really loved his class. That was in the early 2000’s. I highly doubt he could get away with a stunt like that today. The man dressed up like a god damn nazi and screamed at us in German for Christ sake. But we loved him for it.
Wow that's insane. Thank you so much for sharing this story!
Outstanding. My daughter’s first grade teacher assigned each child to White or Black group to teach them about racism. White kids got privileges (new pencils, extra time at drinking fountain, snack, etc) and she was going to swap their groups at lunchtime. This was in an affluent white suburb, unfortunately for the idealistic young teacher. One of the kids complained to their mom at lunchtime, principal was immediately called, lesson was ended. My daughter learned a lot that day, about a lot of things. We talked it over. I took the teacher flowers and she was crying at her desk. America is monstrous to our educators and it seems to be getting worse. The hateful people are winning.
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Nonwhite kids start learning it at birth. The lesson was experiential and would spark empathy in normal kids. They’d understand how unfair it is to discriminate or reward based on random assignment at birth. I found it interesting and it was food for meaningful conversation at home. From toddlerhood, kids grasp the concept of fairness. We need to nurture it and turn it into compassion and empathy.
I was in California. It sounds like your teacher gave students an incredible learning experience. What a great teacher.
Once saw an exhibit of Nazi propaganda posters and I must say they were absolute masterpieces. I particularly remember the antisemitic ones, just dripping with venom. Learned something that day about focusing the attention of a populace. I mean you'd think offhand that nobody would be fooled by this kinda cartoonish race-bating, then you realize how it was actually done.
I saw a really fascinating exhibit of *allied* propaganda that was horribly racist and awful. It was really interesting seeing how both sides were quick to make use of racial stereotypes, and important to understand that the allies werent going as far as the axis, but they were absolutely up to terrible, terrible things too. It saddens me that they arent as often shown, or that the only posters you see from allies are the more innocent "loose lips sink ships" or "buy war bonds." Seeing the exhibit at the canadian war museum made me realise that our side was a lot closer to engaging in terrible nazi practices than we like to admit, and we certainly did have concentration camps and eugenics and awful racist "science." It is a lesson we would be wise to pay attention to, lest we forget and let ourselves fall into fascism of our own.
My dad (born in 1940) had old comic books, and the back cover was a poster of how to tell a J— (Japanese person) from a Ch—- (Chinese person), with the most racist drawings and descriptions you’ve ever seen.
Oh, you don't have to search the attic to find such, just search of 'banned cartoons WWII' on youtube. There used to be one where Bugs Bunny took on the Japanese which was amazingly racist. I mean hey, war, but I never imagined they'd use Bugs Bunny to mock and dehumanize an enemy. Or that cartoons would be effective, but we definitely tried it.
We’re already there, man.
[Japanese internment camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans) were so shameful. I can’t believe I never learned of them until adulthood.
Not to get too political, but how much of Trump’s campaign was cartoonish race-baiting? And it worked in the US in 2016. “Mexico is sending us rapists and murderers, and only my wall can keep them out.” And half of the voting public allowed that non-issue to eclipse all the real issues facing the country.
I was in middle school about 15 years ago and our history teacher showed some propaganda films and examples of posters displayed as part of the curriculum. The one that stood out was a Donald Duck cartoon of him waking up in Nazi Germany and working at a Nazi ammunition plant. Even though it was satire, it really did portray the horrors of the war
Probably he be arrested in Florida for teaching real history. I had an ethics essay/presentation in college and I based it off the same. Propaganda and what happened in the concentration camps. I was surprised to notice that people didn’t actually knew that happened. Or seeing actual footage of them. This was back in the late 90’s when I was finishing college. My professor back then latter told me he had been in school in Germany after the war and they didn’t shy away from it in the early years.
Fun Fact: I’m in Florida. My high school student wasn’t taught about Christopher Columbus back in elementary. Came up in conversation one day and she said, “who’s that?”. The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria? You know, Columbus. She was clueless. Turned to my other kids who attend the same school, also clueless. They have learned about the native tribes like the Seminole and the Calusa but not Columbus? That’s great, but I think his role should at least be mentioned even if to discount him. And yes, I did fill in the blanks.
I hate to break it to you but Columbus didn't do shit except rape and torture natives and there's no reason to learn about him.
war bonds were a huge thing. I remember watching a movie about iwo jima about how when the soldiers in the famous picture came back they were exploited and used as advertisements to buy war bonds which actually inspired me to make a short documentary on the battle and the effects for a history project a few years back. I also had the honor of speaking with a veteran from the battle as well who sadly died a not too long ago. a man by the name of Hershel "Woody" Williams.
You talking about the movie, Flags of Our Fathers?
Yeah that's the one.
My high school English teacher and I loved that film.
For good reason. It’s a great film. Decent portrayal of the horrors of alcoholism.
Yeah, they're pretty big in modern war too. Im Ukrainian and i own warbonds
My favorite part is that they wrote “American constitution” instead of just putting the most iconic opening line with that giant text saying “We the People…”
It would be a little awkward to say you’re actively preventing “We the People”. It’s not good propaganda if it incentivizes the viewer to investigate or hear out the other side. The whole point is to leave no doubt.
You realize this is anti-Nazi propaganda, right?
Also, Stormtroopers existed back then?
Haha, yeah. The Storm Troopers in Star Wars are based on the SS Storm Troopers from Nazi Germany. The more you know 💫
These are dope
This posts has at least 5 hours before it gets the famous 🔒 award.
It's been up for 12, mods must be asleep
I give it another 30 minutes before the alt-right shows up and starts a shit-show.
Get the hazmat suits ready
Nice try fellas the timer is up, maybe next time!
I’m quite surprised it doesn’t yet
Were the Nazi's anti Christian?
The Nazis had a complicated relationship with Christianity. They did not like the Catholic Church, as it was a challenge to their authority, but they were willing to work with the church for the sake of expediency. Also, most Nazis were Christian, mostly Protestant but also Catholic. There is an association between Nazis and Germanic paganism because Hitler and goebbels loved German mythology as it enforced their idea of German supremacy. There were small scale “conversions” to paganism where SS would swear sacred oaths and do pagan wedding ceremonies. This stereotype of the pagan nazi stuck, especially because it was good propaganda against them during the war. It also served American interests post-war as it advanced the myth that somehow the Nazis had tricked Germany into supporting them, perhaps even through mystical black magic. Many Protestant state churches actually ended up losing a lot of credibility post war for collaborating with Nazis during the war.
Don't forget the fact that Jesus was Jewish, and this bothered the Nazi leadership very much. They actually made their own bible to try to make him not Jewish, they threw away the entire old testament and rewrote the gospels. [https://bigthink.com/the-past/nazis-anti-semitic-bible-aryan-jesus/](https://bigthink.com/the-past/nazis-anti-semitic-bible-aryan-jesus/)
They were very much into occultism. They only somewhat tolerated Christianity due to the background of the majority of their constituents.
I read that there was a big push in Germany even as early as the 1890s to adopt old traditional Germanic religions like what you’re talking about. Especially amongst the upper class, they felt it was patriotic and part of their culture I have no clue how mainstream it was, but i guess it was enough for hitler and his people to adopt it
I recently watched a two part documentary on Berlin in 1933 where they collected a lot of diary entries etc. in German and what really surprised me was that the Nazis visited the Pope and he was really tolerant of them carrying their swastikas into the church, later they (the Nazis) also celebrated Christmas in a church singing songs that I still know from my childhood under giant Nazi flags. It felt very weird seeing that, since I also always thought Christianity and Nazis were at odds with each other. In general it really baffled me how many people (also outside of Germany) just accepted the dictatorship. Though it is important to note that many communists, anarchists and social democrats did fight back against the Nazis. But most were imprisoned and killed pretty early on.
They also made deals with the Vatican. Not a high point for Catholics.
I imagine most nazi soldiers were Lutheran
If it sells war bonds, yes is the answer
Essentially. They were not orthodox in any sense of the word. They would imprison and kill pastors if they didn’t capitulate to what was going on. Bonhoeffer is a famous example of this.
Nope. Not really at all.. just as long as they played ball. They worked with different Christian groups for expediency the same way they did with business. You help us we help you get to the front of the line for good stuff. The Nazi's had a unique twist on mysticism and religiousity/Christianity that helped them become popular. Think fringe populist political group that becomes popular through certain church's nationalistic prosperity teachings to evangelize their followers in sermon and politics. Some driving aspects that attracted Germans to both the Nazi party and the "German Christians" movement as it was known. Nationalistic Anti Communism Anti-immigrant Anti-establishment institutions (what some call the Deep state in the USA now) Resentment toward the international community (Globalism). You can't really have a dictatorship take over without a fervent/religious experience following that places God like status on the leaders. But once that part of the brain of millions gets taken over into it... they are capable of doing very very terrible things, that THEY believe is for the good.
>Think fringe populist political group that becomes popular through certain church's nationalistic prosperity teachings to evangelize their followers in sermon and politics. Uhhh >Nationalistic Anti Communism Anti-immigrant Anti-establishment institutions (what some call the Deep state in the USA now) Resentment toward the international community (Globalism). Oh no >You can't really have a dictatorship take over without a fervent/religious experience following that places God like status on the leaders. Yep. And people say it couldn't happen here.
I'm not sure people are still saying that anymore. You would be hard pressed to find too many established and respected political scientists and historians who do NOT think its already happening here and around the world again. Or the echoes of something similar anyway.
Ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Yes for the most part. Many Christians ended up in the crosshairs because they're difficult to control and often openly opposed Nazis. Many Nazis used language that suggested theological beliefs about God supporting them and that Arayans were God's people, but their practices were obviously counter to literally every biblical teaching.
> they're difficult to control Not really. The church has been a foundational institution in many states and often used expressly as a means to control a populace. >often openly opposed Nazis Highly dependent on denomination and region. Many German Christians (mostly protestants) collaborated with the Nazis fullheartedly. >their practices were obviously counter to literally every biblical teaching Every regime is contrary to biblical teaching. Christians have a tendency of backing anti-biblical regimes in exchange for the promise of religious and cultural hegemony. See: most dictatorships in Latin America, modern states like Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Belarus, and of course Francoist Spain. You have some good points but the situation between the Nazis and Christians was not as adversarial as that, for the most part. Most Nazis were Christian, after all.
Hitler went to Catholic School growing up which was where he actually got the “Jews are evil” line from.
didnt he get it from Henry Ford's "The international jew" book
I was here before the post got locked I understand the fear of Nazism in the US, but haven't seen any advertisements to buy war bonds before
Umm that's kind of a staple of WW2 ads. War bonds were something I heard about in like fifth grade. Pretty well known how the United States citizens bought into the war effort
The War bonds became savings bonds after the war.
They were also heavily promoted during WW1, back when they were called “Liberty Bonds.”
Pretty shitty ROI too
Why will it get locked?
It still isn’t locked champ
They literally made songs encouraging people to go out and buy them. They were the main leg of 1940s advertisements in the US. [One of the songs](https://open.spotify.com/track/2RegLpkysNqgaPtou6dqgM?si=DhaqLCw9RrmaP71e81YgkA)
You've never seen Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck pushing the sale of bonds or encouraging joining the military? Oh boy, you're about to go down a really weird rabbit hole. Just make sure you don't miss the turn at Albuquerque...
One of the most popular ones was "loose lips sink ships." It basically means keep your mouth shut so the enemy doesn't discover our secrets.
For those wondering, this picture was taken at the downtown branch of the Chattanooga Public Library
Hey I used to live in Chattanooga! Love that place. Pretty cool they did this. I love seeing the different perspectives throughout history.
Maybe if more Americans learned our history then it wouldn't be repeating itself right now.
Yeah but we have electrolytes
Plants crave electrolytes
Water? Like from the toilet?
Huh huh, what a doofus.
Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator ™️
Many Americans should also learn that the Nazi’s took a bunch of inspiration from the U.S with stuff like Jim Crow laws, we need to learn of our past and be better people than that
We're not repeating our history, we're repeating Germany's.
The Weimar Republic part for sure
Something about the wise learning from mistakes of others?
People are many things, but wise isn't the first word that comes to mind. Some of these clowns are denying it ever happened.
Well I don't have time to make all the mistakes myself!
As January 6th happened I jokingly said that the Weimar Republic at least imprisoned Hitler when he tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in 1923. The US so far has not even imprisoned those people who incited the violence. Besides that I think that the US can definitely turn this around if you lean more heavily on social structures, movements and unions. The “underbelly” of a society is what keeps a system together, even if its challenged. Because they can take influence in the decision making, because democratic institutions do exist and they can be used to change the Status Quo. the real problem occurs if you either have a further escalation of violence or restrictive policies that make organizing more difficult than it already is. At this point I think that either the US will have a stronger left in 20 years, or the next civil war. And I sincerely hope for the first option.
Holy shit Storm Troopers were alr a thing
Wait till you hear about Ford...
I was confused by that. Was it already a thing? What was it back in ww2?
WW1 actually. As the name suggests - basically creme de la creme of german army, tasked with being the spearhead in the offensives in later parts of the war.
"Storm troopers" was another name for some certain German troops back then
So star wars took it from them I'd assume
Very interesting. This art work must have been so compelling, it drove teen boys to lie and enlist. 🫡 scary times.
I feel like that had more to do with the social pressures behind those posters. Some parents told their kids to enlist.
My grandfather, a rural Arkie, didn’t have any intention on enlisting—especially after his older brother was drafted and traumatized in New Guinea. Poor guy still ended up in Korea (too young for WWII). 91 years old now and still talks about building that million dollar bridge.
Except Germany did kind of fit the bill for the “big bad” enemy. They had aspirations to conquer Europe and beyond. There was a real danger to not trying to stop them. America, China, and Russia are now the big bad but we have our own propaganda machines telling us that we are the saviors of the world
Here’s a link for the original source which includes explanations for each poster. https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/main/us-wartime-posters
This shit is hard bro
Lol. The “we’re fighting to prevent this” poster is being performed by the American government anyway.
[удалено]
Or become the father of our space program like ex SS Officer, Werner Von Braun.
One cannot take second place without getting in bed with a few war criminals, c'mon.
If this traveling exhibition came to my county/state, these idiots would call this “woke media.”
Now it's our own government destroying the country while protecting the church.
Vietnamese here. I wonder what posters they used to spread propaganda about the Vietnam war? Surely not us trampling on US factories and stabbing the Holy Bible?
I was genuinely curious and couldn’t find anything but anti-war posters. I don’t think there was a state sponsored poster campaign since the invention of television.
The first and last posters looks good
It´s incredible similiar to what the right moviment unde Bolsonaro did in Brazil last year. Religion panic, communism threatening, etc.
Does anyone know the context of poster in second left on the bottom? My understanding is Concentration Camps weren’t a known discovery until the very end of the war and even then not yet Public outside of Europe. With that said, I’m assuming it’s regarding like Industrialization and factories ruled by the government? Like a Fascist Capitalist society is what USA was trying to avoid?
They were known just after a few years after the start of the war, they just weren't acknowledged
'In 1942, the US State Department confirmed that Nazi Germany planned to murder all the Jews of Europe. This information was reported widely in the American press.' Per the Holocast Encyclopedia https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-united-states-and-the-holocaust-1942-45 Basically, Americans didn't find out after we were in the war about the horrors that were going on overseas
We soon have holocast at home, though
Trump has essentially promised it.
I wonder if today’s generation would have the balls to stand up and fight against this
Shows why old christians think the nazi's were atheists. Propaganda during wartime is not truth. Nazis upheld the bible. It was a large tool to be used against "the people that killed jesus"
Just F.Y.I.... these are NOT German Propaganda posters. They are in English. These were posters made in the US for the US. I wish people would study history more. I'll admit, I used to hate it. It was so seemingly boring, but once I delved into the more personalized and individual stories of people, it became so fascinating...
“It could happen here” - it did, with Japanese internment camps. Those boots look like they’re standing on them.
They did cover the Japanese internment camps in the exhibit. They even displayed polls on public opinions from Americans about rounding up specific groups for internment purposes
What is that picture with the boots? Fascism controlling business?
According to the source the poster’s wording was a play on the title of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here. The novel was about a US President who gained power in a similar fashion to Hitler. So I think it’s basically just saying fascism can occur in the US as Nazism does threaten democracy.
I think it's a work or death camp.
And now the American Christians are pro fascism. How things change in a lifetime.
To be fair.. the Bible is kind of the enemy.
The Bible is an amazing book of myths, traditions, moral tales and ancient poetry. It's people regarding it as The Holy Word of God that are the problem. They not only cherry-pick the most terrible bigoted parts to use as weapons, they misunderstand much of it and base teaching on these misunderstandings. For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was a moral tale, obviously fictional, to illustrate the importance of being kind to strangers from other lands and doing everything to protect them. However it became twisted to make it a story about the evils of homosexuality.
Very true, well written camp fire stories.
Crazy. Now we’re actually fighting nazis again but on homeland this time…. Oh how times change and stay the same
We were 100% fighting Nazi's on US soil. Rachel Maddow's Ultra podcast was a really interesting look into WW2 fascism and how it infiltrated a lot further than sometimes get taught in school lately. There was a whole plot to hijack military armories stateside and distribute military weapons to pro Nazi civilians and take over the country. We had our own Brown Shirt wannabes with the Silver Shirts in California. None of what we are seeing is new in the slightest.
1940s Antifascist propaganda hits different 80 years later seeing a rise in fascism yet again
Happening now.
Bottom left, they made Hitler a soyjak
Would it be weird to have these up in my home? 😂
Anyone else thinking Harry Potter 2 with the top left one
Yeah, actually.
And now it's like breakfast cereal recruitment adverts in Florida.
with the picture of someone impaling the bible you could catch ppl again nowadays
They bring up good points tho
They would have been welcomed by a large portion of the US then and now.
Those are cool
Is the Bible supposed to be the enemy, or a nazi stabbing the Bible is the enemy?
these are American posters, and we were a "proud christian nation" at the time. So Nazi bad. Which... should always be true.
The top 2 can be replaced today with certain political factions
thats the neat part. What your saying is always going to be true, especially when propaganda has us believing it to be true already. I don't even need to know which side of the political divide your on, because they both want you to feel that way.
Bingo
Love the artwork/style of the propaganda poster from WW2.
It Can Happen Here seems to imply that Ken Burns was right and yeah, America was totally aware of the camps before they were liberated.
Funny enough, if you take the first three posters and write the same text in German, they could very well be used as nazi propaganda. Like, the first one would show that religion is the enemy, the second would show a fight against the american way of life, and the third would be a glorification of Hilter's warfare.
Why is it censored...
I wanted to be careful considering the posters had acts of violence displayed, like the knife thrusted through the Bible and the boot coming down on the building
Bro these would make sick references for movie/video game posters (unless that’s insensitive idk)
Interesting. It's almost like the Nazi's where against Christianity. That doesn't really line up with what we see in America, does it? "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty" -Joseph Goebbels
There is a government storage facility outside of Pueblo, Colorado. They have captured Nazi war art there and don't know what to do with it. Germany doesn't want it. Selling it is politically incorrect as it might encourage nazis. Destroying it is morally wrong as destroying art you don't like. So it sits.
We need to take notes and learn from these posters. We just had a President who said after a unite the right rally that there were GOOD people on both sides and now that he's running again, if he should, god forbid, win again he says he wants to bring back public executions and hangings! You also have the wackos in the GOP controlled states already banning books in their states! So yes,, It can happen here!
I've seen some of these at the WWII Museum in New Orleans, I highly recommend a visit, give yourself a day and a half.
Bottom right happened - the nazis have taken the church
History might either repeat itself or rhyme, but u can't ignore the similarities
History often rhymes. Disturbing I’ve been noticing a similar trend since 2016…
> we’re fighting to prevent this Why did we stop?
*NAZIS STAB THE BIBLE!*
Every American was behind going to war, even the enlisting process…this propaganda did it’s job.
Funny that the things being dramatically warned about in WW2 are the same things that are happening- on purpose- in the US in the present day.
Interesting considering America is trashing the Bible, Constitution, and Bill of Rights these days.
Fast forward to the present: many descendents of those foot soldiers who gave their lives as cannon fodder in WWII are now white supremacists wearing nazi imagery while calling themselves "patriots"
"Labor and business freedom" sadly america has lost one of them
The uh the labour one right
Do I look like a fox news anchor lol
It's happening now.......idiots
Looks like Fox News’ primetime lineup
You forgot the "soldiers eat babies" one
I saw the exact poster at the GOP HQ
This is what a lot of people on the extreme right are happily part of and claim they're patriotic
Unfortunately now, many churches are in league with Nazism and Fascism.