this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 111 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This hurts cause this is my dad. I figured they like the military and battle shit, not the political environment that lead to it.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 88 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They do like the military and battle shit. That’s the problem, they’re completely blind to any of the more complicated, interpersonal stuff.

Pew pew boom boom yaaaay, yap yap nooo

[–] valkyre09@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WW1 - they hit some dude in a car and everybody was pissed.

WW2 - everybody was sick of paying for WW1

Easy!

[–] TrousersMcPants@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk if that's really why WWII started...

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There was more to WW1 starting than Franz Ferdinand getting shot, too. They are sarcastically skewering people's simplistic understanding of the causes of those two conflicts.

[–] TrousersMcPants@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I guess so. I think it was mostly Germany tired of paying for WWI tho lol

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[–] Bye@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Tons of US fascists fought in Europe. From their perspective, they weren’t fighting against fascism, they were fighting against Germany.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, when it comes to US reactions to fascism from the 1920s on, WW2 was very much the EXCEPTION, not the rule.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People like to point to the Silver Legion and Jim Crow and such but the native fascist parties didn't even have as much support as they do today.

If you want to argue that segregation was enough to make America a fascist state I wouldn't disagree but Americans at the time simply didn't see it that way, even if some of them liked what that Hitler guy was saying about autarky and making more white babies.

[–] Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Anti-semitism of the kind that Hitler was spouting was very much a mainstream idea, not just in Germany and Austria but all across Europe and the US. Hitler was merely the most radical one that came to power.
It's easy to frame WWII as the battle between democracy and fascism, but reality is a lot messier and more complicated than that.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

More like the American fascists hid in the closet after Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack silenced anymore isolationists, some of whom are fascists sympathetic to Nazi Germany and were even funded by Berlin.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Learning about WWII doesn't teach you how the most progressive, industrialized society in the world at the time, and possibly ever, became fascist. For that you need to learn about WWI, the failed Spartacist uprising from 1917-1923, and the following period where the Nazis rose to power and the last remnants of the USPD and KPD were destroyed.

So unless your uncle is a fan of Rosa Luxemburg, he's probably clueless

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Learning about WWII doesn’t teach you how the most progressive, industrialized society in the world at the time, and possibly ever, became fascist.

But enough about Spain.

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[–] undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

He knows everything about world war 2 and even collects ww2 memorabilia. So, I can't see how he missed it.

And I mean, he has loads of it. He has that luger, the mp 40, that SS uniform, those nazi flag and even an iron cross.

[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Reminds me of my ‘historically interested’ family members.

“Hitler was actually a great person”, they say.

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

”fractured arm from a golf course fall”

Pretty much sums it up.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

He was collecting nazi info. bet

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WW2 people missed WW2 coming and they'd just gotten out of WW1 twenty years prior.

You can cut 70 year old History Channel nerds a bit of slack.

[–] Atrichum@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't have any sources at hand, but I'm pretty sure Europeans saw a second war with Germany coming years before it started.

[–] Fosheze@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Nah. I hear the french actually just whipped up the maginot line the day before the war kicked off.

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