Just suppose

[ritaxis]

You're a German in 1932, and you have some prescience.

What should you be doing?

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Emigrate.

Organise a network of people who are willing and able to help Germans from outside Germany.

But, really, getting out should be your first priority.

[infernarl.livejournal.com]

Are we assuming the individual is anti-(future)-government?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Really?

What if your sense of prescience also tells you "it doesn't have to go that way?"

Then what? What is the thing that people did not do in 1932 that they could have done, to prevent what followed?

(I'm thinking of the way that they had election after election, and the Nazis never got more than forty percent of the vote, and yet the government was handed over to them -- what could Germans do to prevent that? Or to prevent it from going forward when it was done?)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The individually smart thing to do is get the hell out. This could be hard if you're of Jewish heritage, of course.

If the type of prescience you have leaves the future mutable, then you could try to be a hero instead -- anything from working politically to keep solid majorities behind other parties than the Nazis, to caching weapons and organizing resistance cells.

Note that a lot of people are very ill-suited to opposing a world-class demagogue in politics; attempting to take him on head-to-head could be a tragedy, as you watch things go just the way predicted despite your best efforts.

If you *do* have the personal oratorial skills, or the political organization skills, or something, organizing to oppose the Nazis is a good option.

One must also consider assassination. That early, it wouldn't be so hard, especially if getting away was only of secondary interest. I think a lot of us believe it was Hitler's personal magnetism that held the whole thing together and made it work; the corollary is that without him, it wouldn't. This might be *wrong*, of course.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In 1932 it would have been no harder go get out than it would be to get out of the US today -- you'd need enough money and a country that would let you in, just as you would today.

1933 was different.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The thing that would have worked would have been getting the left to work together. (Also, cold fusion and pocket FTL would be nice.)

Killing Hitler probably would have made a difference, then, though not much later.

Tell you what, persuading Krupp and Co that the Nazis were not going to be good for business. If you could have broken off the rich who thought they were controllable, the whole 1933 thing wouldn't have happened, and that seems like a more possible angle of attack than trying to get the left to work together -- fewer people for a start.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I think 1932 is way too late for a single person to change anything, and in essence you are talking about a single person who needs to convince his friends and organise others - and by that time, the whole machine was far too much in motion. In the beginning, there _was_ strong support for the NSDAP - both direct and the 'well, everything is so messed up, let's just see whether they can deliver what they promise.'

As for the 'only fourty percent' - don't forget that you have four or five main parties plus a handful of smaller parties, so any one party that gets fourty percent is likely to get the mandate to form the government.

( http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/ has a nifty map that allows you to view the statistics of the Weimar republic. If you choose a country and click on 'Reichstag' you see the election results. It's an incredibly detailed site.)

After 33, things proceeded at a nasty pace. Little by little, freedoms were taken away, and there was a sublimal preparation for the war, for scarcity, for unthinking obedience. The problem is, I think, that anyone who read Mein Kampf before Hitler came to power would have been incapable of imagining that it was meant to be an actual programme, and would be implemented; or that decent people should take part in it. That was - and to some degree, still is - unthinkable.

I think you need to go back further than 1932 to facilitate a change in society. (There is always the tired old plot of assasinating the bad guys; and in the case of a charismatic leader that certainly will work, but even so, I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to start with that, whereas I _would_ have an idea how to mobilise the masses. Well, in theory.)

So many of the problems - geopolitical situation, end-of-empire feeling, very high unemployment, an economy in shreds, no idea how things would develop - are what gave rise to the NSDAP, and some of their solutions worked. Of sorts. At least initially; and many of their policies grew out of the times - not just in Germany, but elsewhere in Europe (and America) similar ideas were uttered.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'm also thinking investing the army with greater backbone might have helped, as well as improving the global market and relieving some of the pressure on the working class.

[(Anonymous)]

Move to England with your divorced daughter and her little girl.

I got an email some years ago from someone who was looking for relatives or news of his (great-?)grandfather (named Bornstein like me), who had stayed in Germany after the divorce in the 1930s.

I wasn't able to help him, because my line of Bornsteins came to the US in the late 1800s. I sent a copy of the email to my uncle who was into genealogy, just in case.

- Captain Button

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Were there countries taking Jewish emigrants from Germany in 1932? Did *that* change? I was thinking primarily of the dificulty of finding someplace to *go*.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I think it's 1932 right now, not 1928.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I think that the opportunities to change things from within Germany were more limited than those from without - there's a lot that wasn't done, and could have been done. Strengthening the surrounding countries so they wouldn't fall over so quickly, for instance, organising an underground railway-type thing, sabotaging the efficient killing mechanisms of the death camps, and above all setting up a much more efficient propaganda machinery that would have kept Germans informed, or at least much more wary of what was going on in their own country.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Consider who asked you the question. Of course I'm assuming you're not in favor of the Nazis.

I'm also taking as given that the killing of Jews was not about the killing of Jews. So that when we're looking at history, we're not just interested in the names of which people were at which end of the knife, or which people were at which end of the whip, but the processes that put them in their positions.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

And that bit "the killing of Jews was not about the killing of Jews" so doesn't express what I meant to say. Which is that genocide isn't a Jew thing -- remember I say this as a Jew -- it's a political thing. And genocide is not the only thing to worry about in 1932. And that preventing the other things most likely prevents genocide too.

[infernarl.livejournal.com]

Ok, so the person is not a nazi. They still might do something selfish. Leaving would be selfish. Or investing in the defense industry.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"Should" is a very slippery word, implying as it does a single right course of action, and who decides what is right? If, for instance, one felt general compassion for the world and its peoples and was very brave as well, one might choose to attempt to prevent the dissolution into authoritarianism. Given what was coming, however, that would involve extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice; this would be the course of action of what might usually be called a saint. A less brave person might try to protect themself and their family and close friends by, for instance, moving to Latin America. I would not reproach anyone who took this course of action; it seems unreasonable to reproach anyone for not being a saint. An opportunistic person might choose to try to profit and also escape the coming disaster. It would depend on one's place in society as well; a German communist leader or senior party member, having had a sudden flash of precognition, might have been able to make common cause with the German social democrats; even small gestures of co-operation might have made the difference. This would, again, demand unusual courage, since opposition to Stalin's will was often a quick route to an early grave.

Personally, I will always regret not having pursued a political career after my first intuitions, back in the 1980s, that the Reagan Revolution would dissolve into authoritarianism. Why did I not? My intuitions were unclear, and unformed and I didn't believe in my own ability to make a difference. It was not like I had a vision, complete, of Iraq, torture, and La Migra raised to cabinet level (La Migra raised to cabinet level would not even have made sense to me, then); I had a not-very-developed historical analysis and, apparently, a dim vision. I still remember writing, though, that Reagan Revolution might have its Stalin.

What did you have in mind when you posed the question?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes, but how do you do that, as one person?

Going around using your prescience to help you talk to rich people might be manageable.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a different question.

If 40% of people are in favour of the Nazis and you're afraid they're going to parlay that into 100% of the power, you can try talking to the other 60% to make them see how bad the 40% are, you can try nibbling around the edges of the issues for the 40%, you can write things that can try to make a butterfly wing difference so that they don't have elections that are 49% either way and stealable.

Or you can move to Canada, as I did in 2002, however selfish infernal might think it.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Help your Jewish/gay/etc. neighbors get out and follow them with your family & friends.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's that bad yet, but I would have to stay because no countries take disabled old people as immigrants. I'd have to try to get others out instead.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Ah. There is the root of the question. What's your reasoning, here? For the moment, at least, the radical right is out of power, their opposition is fairly unified, and the world situation is very different. It doesn't seem to me very similar to Germany in 1932; I think we've already stepped off the road to reactionary authoritarianism, though not all battles are won yet. What parallels are you seeing?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Non-intuitive but obvious now I've been thinking about it -- I'd go to France and do everything I could to persuade the French to prevent the re-occupation of the Rhineland. I might do it just before, with photographs of how unarmed and unready the Germans actually were, and publish them widely. It's very likely that would have toppled Hitler's government, and without that invincibility time after time getting away with it, it would have stopped snowballing.

Likely, anyway.

If that didn't work, I'd try again at the Anschluss and again at Munich, always in France.

And then La Migra went on a rampage

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Oh.

Further thoughts on the matter, here.