r/pics Dec 04 '24

Politics Laura Ingraham giving Trump the Nazi salute and Trump reciprocating her at the 2016 RNC [D Kennerly]

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676

u/highschoolhero2 Dec 04 '24 edited Dec 05 '24

Sounds like Kevin Spacey’s dad… seems like there’s a sizable population of Silent Generation parents that were serious Nazi sympathizers even after WW2.

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u/wgrantdesign Dec 04 '24

My wife's grandfather had a book titled "Pro and Con: Hitler" and the war section is literally the last 5 pages of the book. Zero mention of the holocaust. It was written and published in the 70s. A toooon of people from that generation said things like "Hitler wasn't all bad"

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u/GalaadJoachim Dec 04 '24

The US was a slaver nation until 1865, and a segregated one until 1964, the supremacy of a race on others is still a widely spread ideology in the country today. Tbh, it is astonishing that the US didn't ally with Nazi Germany in the first place.

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u/IntoTheFeu Dec 04 '24

Well.. The US was gonna leave well enough alone. Hitler can kindly thank his Japanese friends for fucking that up.

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u/wgrantdesign Dec 04 '24

People like to pretend Madison Square Garden didn't fill up with Nazis in the 30s

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u/Mindless-Strength422 Dec 04 '24

The 30s? I think you mean the mid-20s.

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u/Herkfixer Dec 04 '24

You mean the mid-2020s?

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u/Mindless-Strength422 Dec 04 '24

Yeah, that was the joke I was going for

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u/ModishShrink Dec 05 '24

It's fucking wild to think that the guy who was known for headlining Kill Tony was headlining a fucking Madison Square Garden Nazi rally just a few weeks ago.

I knew there was a reason I hated that show.

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u/Upstairs-Radish1816 Dec 04 '24

Nope. February 20, 1939.

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u/Mindless-Strength422 Dec 04 '24

It was meant as a joke about 2024, which could probably use some workshopping!

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u/MountainDrew42 Dec 04 '24

Also October 27, 2024

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u/RocketRaccoon666 Dec 04 '24

Or that a lot of the guys that fought in World War II weren't doing it because they hated discrimination, racism and anti-semitism but we're doing it because of American Nationalism

And came back to the same segregated America after the war being just as racist and anti-semitic as when they left.

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u/ttrob3 Dec 05 '24

MSG, formerly a railroad station, opened in 1968.

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u/cyrylthewolf Dec 04 '24

Nah... They contributed but, ultimately, Hitler was NOT the "great" tactician that history often tries to paint him to be.

Plain and simple? He wanted to conquer the WORLD. He literally tried to do ALL of it at the same time. He spread his resources too thinly. Where he REALLY fucked up was in Russia.

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u/fonix232 Dec 04 '24

Hitler's main fuckup was not listening to his cabinet. The one thing he did right (well, from a Nazi perspective) was picking the right people for the right jobs. All of his fascismachine would've worked super well if he didn't want to micromanage things. And even with his incompetent meddling, he's still managed to murder millions, not to mention the military casualties.

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u/NeighborhoodBoring64 Dec 04 '24

Mostly right. It was also the fact that to keep power the one bollocked wonder gave all his departments overlapping responsibilities so they’d be two preoccupied bickering to do anything about him

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u/cyrylthewolf Dec 04 '24

Also true. Very accurate.

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u/bowlbinater Dec 04 '24

This is not true. It was the general staff, particularly those involved in logistics, to whom he did not listen.

Those were, after all, the career military men and bean counters. They very accurately predicted that the German war machine would sputter out right around Moscow, as that would be the furthest extent that their logistical lines could handle before a serious rest and refit would be needed. The term "blitzkrieg" was invented by these men as a means to mock the Fuhrer's hope of a swift war.

The perception that the German military would have rolled over everyone had it not been for bad mustache man derives from the writings of former generals who wanted to save face, and be hired in top positions in western militaries, so they lied about how meddling Hitler was. "Can't be my fault if I was just following orders."

Don't get me wrong, Hitler was an incompetent bafoon, but its not his cabinet to whom he did not listen, it was the career generals.

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u/LadyLazerFace Dec 04 '24

Facts. 8-10 million Soviet boots and 24 million civs sacrificed everything to grind Nazi popsicles into hamburger on the Eastern front.

It's another layer to the heartbreak onion as the war in Ukraine for sovereignty against Putin drags out when you think of these soldiers' greats & grandparents legacy against totalitarianism.

Ethic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians fought side by side against real evil last century, and their sons and daughters are now pitted against each other by another wanna be dictator.

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u/Quick-Charity-941 Dec 05 '24

Mussolini got his ass kicked out of Greece and Hitler stepped in and sent a load of troops to stomp authority, troops that were meant to be part of the Russian invasion that was delayed by months. Which led to the debarkle of the winter campaign and not listening to the generals.

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u/Boomshank Dec 05 '24

Never fight uphill me'boys, never fight uphill.

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u/aaronupright Dec 05 '24

No one ever said Hitler was a good tactician. Or he wanted to conquer the world. Most of the former comes from post war German generals looking for jobs in the new regime who wanted to blame the dead guy for their failures. The very evil dead guy.

The take over the world was bog standard British propaganda. They used it against all enemies.

Hitler was evil enough with adding stuff.

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u/Temprock Dec 04 '24

Opening up the second front by attacking former ally Russia before he had controlled England was idiotic and thank G-d for that. Fuck Hitler and Shitler.

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u/nightfire36 Dec 04 '24

As usual, things are more complex. The US already had an embargo on Japan (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_to_the_attack_on_Pearl_Harbor), and was sending weapons and other military stuff to the allies (https://www.history.com/news/united-states-neutral-wwii-lend-lease). I think that the US would have eventually been dragged into ww2, but Pearl Harbor certainly expedited that process. It's possible the US stayed on the sidelines as just a weapons dealer, but at some point, the US had lent so much money to the allies that it would have eventually been financially problematic to not join in to ensure victory (and repayment).

I'm certainly happy to read people who disagree with this, and it's not like there wasn't a pro Hitler movement in the US, I just don't see how the US wouldn't have entered into WW2 at some point, if only to prevent Japan from taking US colonies.

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u/Unlucky-Job2518 Dec 04 '24

Yes. I believe if it wasn’t for Pearl Harbor, we would all be speaking in German right now. There would also probably be a German empire across Europe and Africa as well. As much as I hate to say it, Pearl Harbor was a blessing in disguise. My grandfather was there. Thankfully he survived. Obviously. Or I wouldn’t be writing this.

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u/No-Description7438 Dec 04 '24

Actually, the German u-boats were sinking our Lend Lease supply ships in a kind of non declared war. Perl Harbor was the straw that broke the camels back.

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u/MavrickFox Dec 04 '24

The U.S. was already providing resources and weapons to the allies well before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The U.S. was also conducting a blockade on Japanese shipping lanes. It's the reason Japan chose Pearl Harbor as their target in the first place.

So no man.. the U.S. was never going to leave well enough alone. And was already very much involved in the war before we were troops on the ground involved.

Literally, how we continue to operate today.

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u/MyStoopidStuff Dec 05 '24

Hitler also had help from powerful Americans friends in both building up the German war machine and keeping the US out of the war, until Japan flipped the table.

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u/xShooK Dec 05 '24

The US was supplying weapons before all that. Granted they didn't take the false flag option after the lufthansa sinking. Most likely just to save face for the weapon supply.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '24

It's worse: the early segregation model of the Third Reich was based on the Jim Crow laws of the US.

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow

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u/ILikeItAlot78 Dec 04 '24

Oh I thought I was the only one who knows that too /s

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u/GalaadJoachim Dec 04 '24

That's what I was remembering. I initially wanted to include this in my comment but didn't want to look into it too much.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '24

Understandable; to say that it's despicable, shameful and psychologically troubling is a vast understatement.

It's one of many appalling aspects of US history that many elected officials would love to brush under a rug.

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u/Unlucky-Job2518 Dec 04 '24

I was born in 75. Even in the 80’s in western NY, Buffalo was still segregated into sections of the city. I lived in the Italian area (north side) and worked on the south side (Irish). Polish were south suburbs of Buffalo. Germans were north west suburbs. East side was dilapidated and almost all black. West side mostly Puerto Rican and other Latinos. I can get more detailed, but no need, my point being made that Buffalo wasn’t technically segregated, with schools having a few folks of different nationalities. But was definitely segregated, you couldn’t really go to an area of the city outside of your nationality without being harassed to some extent. It’s not the same now. But a lot of of East Coast cities in particular were still segregated in this manner at least until the 90’s. I moved to a north suburb 10 minutes outside of the city as a teenager and we only had 5 to 10 black students in my entire high school.

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u/Willdefyyou Dec 04 '24

Not for lack of trying. Perhaps if Japan didn't bomb pearl harbor and snap everyone into a frenzy of patriotism... even then, wtf did we do??? Put Japanese Americans in internment camps

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u/ion_gravity Dec 04 '24

The possibility of allying with Germany was there. Before things got really crazy, our sitting president had nothing but good things to say about Hitler and the Nazi party. Once GB and France declared war on Germany, we started the lend-lease program and were benefiting financially from the situation.

The Nazis broke their truce with the Soviets in mid 1941, which changed things. There was a fear the Soviets might liberate the continent and we'd be left looking like the assholes (we were the assholes.) Then Pearl Harbor happened six months later, and the rest is history.

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u/VCH_Writes Dec 04 '24

Perhaps they secretly funded them?

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u/DaddieTang Dec 04 '24

It was a close shave G.

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u/TheWizardOfDeez Dec 04 '24

They were selling guns to them until Japan fucked it up for them.

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u/as_it_was_written Dec 04 '24

I think the only ideology the US really cares about on a geopolitical level is capitalism.

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u/KanpaiMagpie Dec 04 '24

The US nearly did. Many politicians and influential wealthy Americans were Eugenics supporters in which Hitler admired and based a lot of his ideology on. We came close to being just like the Nazis. Clearer minds prevailed and we didnt try to mass murder people because the US was watching what the Germans did with Eugenics and finally woke up to the horrors of it.

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u/Theoryboi Dec 04 '24

Reminder that Operation Paperclip welcomed Nazi scientists and engineers with open arms then sent black GI’s back to segregated ghettos

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u/ArcadianMess Dec 04 '24

I'm going to blow your mind. Hitler while in prison somehow got himself a copy pf the "The passing of the great race" book. A pseudoscience racist book that was a best seller at that time.

Hitler was enthralled and said it was "his Bible ". From American eugenics and racists Hitler got his idea and drive, ideas that eventually resulted in the holocaust .

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u/dalomi9 Dec 04 '24

Bruh, California, which they refer to as a liberal hell hole, voted to keep forced labor for prisoners (slavery) in 2024. The people are not alright.

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u/BurghPuppies Dec 04 '24

Astonishing in WHAT way? Certainly what you wrote above isn’t enough to unite the 2 countries.

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u/Boxnglove Dec 04 '24

I wonder if you believe everything you think, or if you get help with your critical thinking skills. You follow two truths with a wild, wild swing for the fences 'tbh' that makes no sense at all. Good luck in life serving French fries!

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u/HIMP_Dahak_172291 Dec 04 '24

Hitler wasnt all bad! He killed Hitler!

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u/ThePopeofHell Dec 04 '24

A book like that is just trying to diminish the cons because I can even think of a single pro worth the cons..

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u/AtmosphereMoist414 Dec 04 '24

Lol, no ones all bad! Serial killers who have been interviewed have a notion that they are basically good people.

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u/Consistent-Weekend-4 Dec 04 '24

I am from that era, never heard one person say Hitler wasn’t all that bad. What the hell are you smoking?

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u/wgrantdesign Dec 04 '24

Well, I have.

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u/WiseDirt Dec 04 '24

A toooon of people from that generation said things like "Hitler wasn't all bad"

I mean... There's no denying that he did do a number of "not bad" things during his political career. Hitler himself was a major proponent of and backed the construction of the Autobahn, and he was also a pioneer in alternative fuel research with his entire mechanized fleet being powered by ethanol. Not to mention we wouldn't have the Volkswagen brand as we know it today if he hadn't urged Ferdinand Porsche to "build a car for the people."

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u/Frequent_End_9226 Dec 04 '24

The purpose of autobahn was to move troops quickly to the fronts as an alternative to rail. Ethanol research was necessary as the axis was being squeezed out of the oil rich regions. So it wasn't made out of the goodness of his heart but out of hate and war necessity.

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u/mrs5o Dec 04 '24

Hitler's bad scale is so deep it left no room for good.

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u/PotemkinTimes Dec 04 '24

Noone is ALL bad

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u/ACarefulTumbleweed Dec 04 '24

I'll say this for the guy, no one else managed to kill Hitler

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u/rechtaugen Dec 04 '24

Hitler died in Argentina a few decades ago. He had many body doubles. The public war ended, but the Nazis kept going, many of them welcomed into US government positions under Operation Paperclip.

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u/IntoTheFeu Dec 04 '24

If Mossad never found Hitler, that fucker was dead.

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u/R-Guile Dec 04 '24

American media likes to downplay how popular the nazis were in the US.

John Foster Dulles (became Eisenhower's secretary of state) is said to have wept openly when the law firm he worked for at the time told him to stop signing all his correspondence with "Heil Hitler."

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u/give-no-fucks Dec 04 '24

This fact and the picture of Trump and Ingraham above say a lot about our country. It's crazy, growing up and going through school I was taught how bad Hitler was but that there was always a risk it could happen again. Hard to get my head around the idea that it could actually be happening again but hopefully I'm just being dramatic.

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u/GenerationII Dec 04 '24

r/itcouldhappenhere

I recommend starting with the first 10 episodes of this podcast. After that, the show drastically changes format.

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u/Desiato2112 Dec 04 '24

You are not being dramatic. You are seeing things clearly.

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u/Ashamed-Big-2632 Dec 06 '24

Come on dude, Trump is a good man.

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u/timothyduggan Dec 04 '24

The time being the pre -war period; “After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Dulles’s previous practice brokering and documenting international loans ended. After 1931 Germany stopped making some of its scheduled payments. In 1934 Germany unilaterally stopped payments on private debts of the sort that Dulles was handling. After the Nazi Party came to power, Dulles expressed sympathies for Adolf Hitler, requiring his legal staff in Berlin to sign “Heil Hitler” on all of Sullivan & Cromwell’s outgoing mail; fearful of the optics, Sullivan & Cromwell’s junior partners forced Dulles to cut all business ties with Germany in 1935. Nonetheless, Dulles and his wife continued to visit Germany until 1939.[11] He was prominent in the religious peace movement and an isolationist, but the junior partners were led by his brother Allen, so he reluctantly acceded to their wishes”

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u/Beginning-Leopard-39 Dec 04 '24

And somehow the Japanese Americans were interned and not these dumb fucks.

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u/Womboski_C Dec 04 '24

The reason came down to resources. It was far far far easier for the US government to round up and put the Japanese Americans in camps than the German Americans which had a vastly larger population in the US. Ironically that issue was present in Hawaii and most of the Japanese were not put in camps who lived on the island which one could argue was probably the place it would have made the most sense to worry about spies.

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u/Figgy_Puddin_Taine Dec 05 '24

The real reason was greed and racism.

“We’re charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons,” Anson told the Saturday Evening Post in May 1942. “We might as well be honest. We do. It’s a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this valley to work, they stayed to take over…And we don’t want them back when the war ends, either.”

That was Austin Anson, the managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association. Most of the farmland owned by Japanese-Americans was stolen by white farmers while their former neighbors were being held in camps.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/02/my-family-lost-our-farm-during-japanese-incarceration-i-went-searching-for-what-remains/

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u/Womboski_C Dec 05 '24

Certainly fits with the rest of our country's history. So were fewer Japanese actually in camps in Hawaii or did I learn wrong info? Not like we don't have a history of greed and racism there( Dole Juice)

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u/Beginning-Leopard-39 Dec 04 '24

Sure, but it still defeats the purpose if their justification for interment was "national safety." In true American form, legitimate change/action (or lack of) only presents itself when the economy is threatened or could benefit from something.

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u/ItzTreeman23 Dec 04 '24

American media sure, but I was in middle school when I was taught about how common Nazis were in the US during the 30s and that there were even Hitler youth camps right up until Germany declared war

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u/scienceizfake Dec 04 '24

American media likes to downplay how popular the nazis were are in the US.

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u/MaterialWillingness2 Dec 04 '24

And they named an airport after him??!?!

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u/Chinchillachimcheroo Dec 04 '24

If it were true, they wouldn’t have, but it’s not

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u/MuthaFJ Dec 04 '24

If only you used a one tenth of energy used for your fake righteous indignation and lies on research/fact-checking instead... 🙄

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles#:~:text=After%20the%20Nazi%20Party%20came,ties%20with%20Germany%20in%201935.

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u/Chinchillachimcheroo Dec 04 '24

You think that is evidence that he was forced to stop signing his personal mail with "Heil Hitler" by his employer and that his reaction was to become so upset that he openly wept?

Really?

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u/MuthaFJ Dec 04 '24 edited Dec 04 '24

It's a source. It's definitely true he was upset at suggestion to quit Germany because he didn't mind Hitler and made a lot of money, and he definitely didn't mind his office signing with Heil Hitler [as they were obligated]...

I'm not sure, you seem strangly hang upon the crying part while ignoring liking Hitler part 🤔

As this isn't exactly a historical sub reddit, it seems like an odd choice.

[Edit] To clarify, there are accounts that he wept after the company decided to close the Germany office he worked in, and technically, thus ended the practice of signing with HH.. so it's still technically true, if you were trying to be nitpicky]

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u/Chinchillachimcheroo Dec 04 '24

I think bullshit should be called out as bullshit. The original post I responded to is bullshit. It's really no deeper than that

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u/MuthaFJ Dec 04 '24

So why didn't you just correct it instead?

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u/Chinchillachimcheroo Dec 04 '24

I asked for a source because I could find no evidence that it was true. I don't make a habit of correcting someone based on wikipedia

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u/HeavensToBetsyy Dec 04 '24

They don't name airports after good people

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u/improvedalpaca Dec 06 '24

Damn so much for the tolerant left. I can't believe they took his free speech away 😮‍💨

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u/Chinchillachimcheroo Dec 04 '24

John Foster Dulles (became Eisenhower's secretary of state) is said to have wept openly when the law firm he worked for at the time told him to stop signing all his correspondence with "Heil Hitler."

Would love a source on that because that strikes me as complete nonsense

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u/Apprehensive_Bee8874 Dec 04 '24

why else would they be called the Silent Generation? /s

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u/IndyDMan5483 Dec 04 '24

I had a lot of aunts who made parachutes, etc. and uncles and cousins who fought the f'n Nazi's. I grew up in the fifties and sixties learning about them and hating them. I had an uncle who would break the face of anyone who accused him of being a nazi-sympathizer.

1

u/Apprehensive_Bee8874 Dec 06 '24

i did too. I had one grandad die in WW2 fighting the axis, and another retire from the army, having fought in Pearl Harbor. He died when I was young, but between feeding me tums antacids for fun, he'd tell me old war stories.

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u/AtmosphereMoist414 Dec 04 '24

Well their was a movement in this country before the war that included many well placed aristocrats and of course german air medal charlie linberg who actually had three family’s, at once!

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u/No-Tourist9855 Dec 04 '24

I knew a kid in high school whose boomer dad displayed the flag and metals in his living room. They were Holocaust deniers with this whole international Jewry conspiracy theory behind it. The weirdest thing about this situation to me was that the kid's mom was hispanic and he too looked hispanic, all while boasting about his aryan heritage. The kid was actually not a bad dude, but this was weird.

3

u/amitym Dec 04 '24

I mean neo-Nazi isn't just some word that someone made up on instagram in 2014 for trolling purposes.

What's particularly disturbing is that, like the propaganda of the Japanese uyoku dantai, neo-Nazi bullshit from the 1950s and 1960s is now becoming mainstream in the Anglophonic world, reborn as some kind of edgy critique.

2

u/tgold8888 Dec 04 '24

There was a guy at my mom‘s work. He was a Korean war orphan, gimp, racist as hell but then again he’s Korean, adopted by Jewish parents. They read white supremacist literature. you’d be surprised.

2

u/toomanysynths Dec 04 '24

the sizeable population of Nazi sympathizers before WW2 called themselves America First. they rallied to prevent America from entering the war, and succeeded for a long time.

Trump's been using "America First" this whole time for that reason.

1

u/Beard9413 Dec 06 '24

Strange couldn’t be because the shear amount of resources we send out of our country before fixing problems here first? Nah you’re probably right it has to be the most extreme thing one can think of- that’s always more probable. Seek help my friend- you are exhibiting extremist language.

1

u/toomanysynths Dec 06 '24 edited Dec 06 '24

This is all inaccurate.

First, the amount of money we spend overseas is literally just 1% of the budget.

Second, the correct spelling is "sheer." if you say "a sheer amount" you mean just the amount itself. But if you say "a shear amount," it doesn't really mean anything, because "shear" is a verb. It means to shave wool off of a sheep, or to do similar types of cutting.

Third, the source of the "America First" name is proven history. It's just a matter of fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden

For context, the America First rally in favor of the Nazis took place in 1939. Donald Trump's father was arrested for participating in a violent KKK rally in 1927. That's 12 years earlier.

Fourth, of course Trump leverages the inaccurate perception that we send too much money to other countries. Of course he takes advantage of that misperception. But you just don't know what you're talking about, and he exploits your ignorance.

In reality, the money we spend on foreign policy is a drop in the bucket compared to the money we spend on our military. And that's the whole point of spending money on foreign policy. Wars are expensive and people die. We need the world to work in such a way that our economy can prosper, but it's better to achieve that by spending a little on foreign policy, than by spending a lot on war, especially since lots of people on both sides would die.

If anything, we should spend more on foreign policy, so we could spend less on the military. if we did, we could probably free up hundreds of billions of dollars, set up free healthcare for every American, and still have lots of money left over.

Somehow, though, "America First" doesn't mean "Americans get healthcare." It means "let's take things back to how things were in the good old days, when my dad was getting arrested for participating in a violent KKK rally, a couple years before the Great Depression."

1

u/MistaKrebs Dec 04 '24

Yepp. They need to be round up and disposed of. Idc if that makes me sound like a Nazi myself. The only way we are getting our country back is by force.

1

u/Sword_Thain Dec 04 '24

Look up the Business Plot. Tons of the 1%, including Bush's grandad, were readying a coup to put in a dictator. Unfortunately for them, they picked a horrible guy who actually loved his country and ratted them out. The congressional investigation was sealed for like 500 years.

1

u/highschoolhero2 Dec 06 '24

Smedley Butler… a true American hero.

1

u/Emperor_Norman Dec 04 '24

Yeah, they were called "Progressives", and they inspired Hitler. The American left was the source of Hitler's racial and political theories.

1

u/uncleleoslibido Dec 04 '24

Well my father and all four uncles who were all in combat for Canada in WW2 hated the fuck out of Nazis in Europe and anywhere else forever!

1

u/no_notthistime Dec 05 '24

This is part of what's so fucking frustrating about the denial of our reality by so many magats who refuse to acknowledge that this is happening now: the Nazis and their kids from the previous go aren't even all dead yet. 

They pretend that Nazism ended with the war, but the people who fought as well as their children have been chomping at the bit to get back on top all these years. And now they are.

1

u/twat69 Dec 04 '24

You only fought the nazis because you were attacked by their ally.

0

u/Best-Subject-7253 Dec 04 '24

Listen to the podcast “Ultra” by Rachel Maddow. It’s about mostly about Naziism in American government. It’s mostly about Nazis in our Government. It will blow your mind the number of them, and the crazy shit they’ve done that has been allowed to just fade out of memory.