HISTORY 322 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Nazi Party, Feedback, Everytime
March 20th - Hitler’s Gamble Into War
● Info-capitalism:
○ Everytime we leave our footprint anywhere we share our information with the world
■ Can’t opt-out
■ Also, we don’t know who is in charge of this propaganda
○ Internet is seem as democratic (access to knowledge) - but access to fake news is also
democratic
○ Ways in which we are implicated when we like things -- besides the pt.
■ Part of a structure that is dislodge from an agent where we can place blame on a
specific “bad” party
○ Be critical of the knowledge you absorb, just because it’s accurate news - you are part of
a system of information circulation
■ Culture = crucial to making people act and think in a certain kind of way
● Unaware that we make decisions partially based on recognition of
knowledge
● Nazi Germany - people selectively choose to hear certain things and
block out others
■ Power - seductive
● Looking ahead...thinking about how historians explained these things
○ Hitler has explained his goals to exterminate evil others
■ He said it so there must have been a plan - historian view
■ If he were to engage in world war, it would end in extermination of jews
● Hitler’s language was riddled with these sorts of extremist rhetorics
○ No evidence that hitler had any clue of how this was supposed to be done
○ With general view of history changing - started to look at change in social structures
■ Started with implication of ordinary people within mechanics of governance
■ Argued that the technological possibilities and willingness to implicate
crystallized as a function in response to war
● Resource scarcity
○ Ad hoc responses to governance/flaws in the system (war chaos)
- happened on the fly
■ Pitfall -
○ Hitler was a weak leader
■ Controversial
■ because making Hitler as strong leader locates blame in
one particular place
● Evil man who made it happen → comfortable
○ Killing became essential due to various decision makers to
advance their standing
■ Missed that there was an agenda → discount anti-
semitism and ideological underpinnings in the way
they use language
find more resources at oneclass.com
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○ Types of solutions people were willing to contemplate grew out
of nazi ideology - not just out of systemic way
○ Seek to understand roles of system v. various individuals
■ We are all part of the structures that we try to shape
● Feedback loop between how ideologies and the systems that serve them
work together
○ No one explanation for holocaust - genesis was NEVER inevitable
■ Required systemic factors and response to factors
■ War was necessary condition for radicalization to be possible
● Didn’t care about plight of others, focused on own problems
■ Careerism - Nazism allowed them to further their rankings
○ Things not unique to Nazism - western idea of efficiency
■ Less resources, less labor → better
■ Needed to be present for certain solutions to be plausible/desirable
■ Have a longer history and were applied to this problem
● Mechanism of how to solve a problem is something Western scientists
still resort to
○ I.e. making workflow processes more efficient
○ Terror, reward, fear and the will to power operate at multiple and interconnected levels
● Hitler after Munich
○ Question of war is not if, but when it’ll happen (and how)
■ Mind boggling for international community - wrap head around the fact that ppl
want to go to war, esp. in context of WWI
● Why would anyone risk more death and destruction?
● Explains in part why international community was playing along with
Hitler’s nonsensical demands/actions
● Polish Sovereignty was the red line - if polish sovereignty/territorial lines
were breached then total war would ensue
■ Not a clear plan for how to go to war, however plans to go to war was made by
the SS not hitler
● Didn’t care about Poland → trying to figure out the debacle that
military minds before WW2 thought about
○ How to avoid two front line and defeat russia
○ Main issue was how to defeat russia without getting the Americans involved
■ How to limit this conflict to get what he wanted
■ Poland gave them ideological playground to implement ideas of race
● Test for the international community that proves to Hitler that they mean
what they say
● Invasion of Poland
○ Defeated very quickly (within 3 weeks)
■ PR boost
■ Nothing really happens in terms of war
■ September 17th 1939, starting invasion → end of sept. poland is divided
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Everytime we leave our footprint anywhere we share our information with the world. Also, we don"t know who is in charge of this propaganda. Internet is seem as democratic (access to knowledge) - but access to fake news is also democratic. Ways in which we are implicated when we like things -- besides the pt. Part of a structure that is dislodge from an agent where we can place blame on a specific bad party. Be critical of the knowledge you absorb, just because it"s accurate news - you are part of a system of information circulation. Culture = crucial to making people act and think in a certain kind of way. Unaware that we make decisions partially based on recognition of knowledge. Nazi germany - people selectively choose to hear certain things and block out others. Looking aheadthinking about how historians explained these things. Hitler has explained his goals to exterminate evil others.
