What if Germany in the 1930's had the Internet?

[LosinIt]

Do you think they would have been able to organize against Hitler before it got out of hand?

What if we didn't have the Internet? Could things be worse than they already are?

[Hello_Kitty]

1. Good question

I don't know but I suspect * would be banning the 'Internets' right now if he could.

[George_S]

16. Agreed, and there are efforts to "censor" it already

The 'Net is a wild card the Reacts didn't count on during their plans over the last 25 years.

[rawtribe]

2. we'll find out

soon enough.

[getoffmytrain]

3. If..

Germany had the web in the 1930's it would have been totally controlled by the Nazis and been used as vehicle for their propaganda.

[Maple]

7. The internet then as now

would have been worldwide. Nazis couldn't keep it out anymore than China can now.

[getoffmytrain]

8. A gov. could fairly easily

control the web traffic coming in and out of a country if they so desired. China dabbles in it, North Korea a little moreso than China... don't think the web can't be in total lockdown if people with the power to do so intended it to be.

[UpsideDownFlag]

10. sure it can. for instance, Saudi Arabia controls which IP addresses can

go where. or something to that effect. have you ever tried to access a site, and had a "forbidden" message come up? its happened to me a few times.

[LiberteToujours]

4. YES

The internet is an absolutely revolutionary tool. I believe that it has already changed the world in ways we don't even realize and will continue to change the world dramatically. People can connect across the world as easily as they can across the street now, and I think that that will eventually lead to a much more tolerant global community where governments can no longer deceive us by blaming their problems on foreigners. It's already moving that way.

[unblock]

5. vee haf vays ov making you post

they would have made better use of the internet as part of their propaganda. they would have figured out how to infiltrate and render dissenting boards useless.

then again, they were pretty thuggish, so they probably would have just seized offending servers....

[rwenos]

6. Leni Rifenstahl Would Be Mark Cuban

and would now own the Hamburg Brownshirts, three-time league champs in the Headbusting League.

God, what a thought!

[Robeson]

9. If they had it during the Weimar Republic before Hitler...

...then I think the train would have been out of the station so to speak in that it would have been hard to contain diverse information and news. If it had began under Hitler, they would have probably used it as just another propaganda tool.

If we didn't have the internet, it would, in my opinion, be a lot worse than it is, because everyone would be getting their source of information off of TV media. And we know how that is.

[LosinIt]

11. agreed, if our only source of 'news' was the print media or radio

as it was then, the 'message' could be so easily controlled, more so than it is now. Think about what we know thanks to DU and links to foreign media, that would all be truly underground.

[autorank]

12. Ass kicking art like John Heartfield's would have been everywhere!

This guy invented photo montage and was one of the first artists to employ his art for specific political purposes. Heartfield was not his original German name but he chose this during WWI to protest the war by taking an English last name.

He is well worth checking out and, if your an artist, studying:

http://www.towson.edu/heartfield/artarchive.html

[LosinIt]

14. Wow, Thanks, that is awesome

I am bookmarking that as we speak.

[autorank]

15. It's worth spreading around. Heartfield is, in some ways, a

predecessor of the DU spirit. His stuff is so powerful. I mean the guy stood up to Hitler! He became a Marxist and ended up living out his life in East Germany but his attacks on Hitler are classic. I just don't know anybody who did photo montage earlier (except Man Ray maybe). Glad you liked it.

[George_S]

17. LOL, everything is just wonderful!

History repeats itself?

Thanks for the link.

[ReadTomPaine]

13. What they really needed was a tough group like the Teamsters.

The day after Kristallnacht there would have been broken Nazi heads and broken Nazi legs all over Germany. That would have been the end of Nazism.

It doesn't take magic or technology to stop Fascists. It takes guts.

RTP

[George_S]

18. They would have tried to win them over to their side

If they couldn't, then you may be right.

[LosinIt]

19. You're right, it does take guts, but first you have to know it's happening

and with the WWW many of us would be clueless, just quietly drinking our daily ration of the Kool-Aid.

[secular_warrior]

20. Most poor and opressed people wouldn't have it - just like now.

Many folks on the internet assume that everyone has access to computers, and think that the online community is truly representative of the population as a whole - it's not.

Basically the internet is still dominated by those who are middle-to-upper class, those who are white and those who are educated. These folks are the ones who control the internet, just as they control society as a whole.

If Germany had the internet in the 1930s, the poor and the oppressed still wouldn't have a voice. It would still be the elites who control everything, just as they do in our society.

[LosinIt]

22. Agreed, but if I didn't have access to the Internet I would be clueless

about the felons running this country. If your only source of news is that which is filtered through the Ministry of Propaganda, you will be uninformed and therefore have no reason to doubt that your government is looking out for your best interests.

[eridani]

24. True, but there is access--

Homeless people in Seattle can use the library internet link for an hour a day (as can anyone with a library card), and some have connected with jobs or housing that way.

[camero]

25. Alot of libraries have access

The poor and oppressed still don't have a voice. People hear what they want to hear. Access or no, noone is listening.

[JSJ]

21. they'da been swimming in penile dysfunction spam

[camero]

23. They would find us that much quicker

They probably would have had code words that they looked for. Like I'm sure they do now. There are still a few military people to convince that Gawd loves Amerika.

[DivinBreuvage]

26. The Internet wouldn't have mattered, because

by the time Hitler was big enough to be a problem (i.e. enmeshing Germany in a war that would almost destroy it), the majority of Germans thought he was just dandy because he had put the German economy back on track and had scored truly phenomenal political triumphs over the rich and powerful nations that had treated Germany in such a vindictive and oppressive manner after the First World War.

Before Hitler was big enough to be a problem, even without the Internet there were plenty of people talking about what a crackpot he was. Even Josef Goebbels fought against him for a time. The German press of the 1920s offered a far wider range of views than the American press of today.

Despite the lamentations that some DUers like to indulge in over Weimar, the hard fact of the matter is that the Weimar Republic was an aberrational freak of German history. Unlike America, Germany did not have a centuries-old culture of democratic republicanism, but of authoritarianism. Not that many Germans were terribly sorry to see the ineffectual depression-era Weimar Republic laid to rest in favor of a traditionally strong German leader who would put people back to work and re-assert the German right to power. And those that were, were generally not quite as "German" as the rest of the country: jews, democrats (meaning those who endorsed the silly and unGerman concept of parliamentary government), homosexuals, antisocial persons, people of that sort.

(As an aside, my personal belief is that modern Americans do not have the right to judge the Germans. Half of modern America swoons over an apeling that has wrecked the national economy, bungled the country into an unequalled series of diplomatic embarrassments and one immense crisis, and almost irreparably damaged American honor and standing throughout the entire world. If the Germans who supported the successful Hitler of the 1930s were stupid, what does that say about American conservatives?)

[LosinIt]

28. But that is my point..

"by the time Hitler was big enough to be a problem (i.e. enmeshing Germany in a war that would almost destroy it), the majority of Germans thought he was just dandy because he had put the German economy back on track and had scored truly phenomenal political triumphs over the rich and powerful nations that had treated Germany in such a vindictive and oppressive manner after the First World War."

That's my point, the majority of Germans saw the 'good' that the Nazis were doing, but didn't perceive the thuggery of the Brownshirts as systematic, only as isolated incidents because I wasn't covered in the propaganda press. If we were only following the mainstream media we would have no idea of the things that were going on in this administration. The only reason that the mainstream press has covered half of the issues they have is because people like us have forced it on them with email and calling campaigns.

[DivinBreuvage]

33. Right, but I'm saying that it wouldn't have mattered because

the majority of the German people wouldn't have cared about whatever ugly truth was being posted on the Internet. Giving truth to the people is an excellent thing, but when the people say "so he bent the rules and broke a few heads... so what? He's still the man for me!" you've got bigger problems than the Internet can solve.

I certainly agree with you that the mainstream American news media have almost universally betrayed their primary purpose and foresaken their obligation to the American people. This problem absolutely must be addressed if the Republic is to be restored. But truth and investigation can't do it alone. You must also take into account the 30-40% of the American people who are always going to say, "I don't care about the facts -- my mind is already made up and I'm voting Republican!"

[nickfaldo7]

30. Exactly

I've been making comparisons of Bush and Hitler for a few months now. People today can't understand how millions of Germans followed the ideals of a nationalistic/fascist, genocidal, maniac. Yet, here we are in America on the verge of the same thing. How ironic.

[newyawker99]

34. Hi nickfaldo7!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[humanbeing]

27. www.democratisch-untergruend.de :)

That's what they would have called it.

[Ms.Victory]

29. Hitler would have said,

Ich höre, dass es Gerüchte auf dem Internets gibt.

[Ottmar]

31. www.freie-republik.de

A good question. But the Nazis were masters of propaganda so they would have profited too. BTW everybody had "Mein Kampf" in the bookshelf but most people didn't care to much when their jewish fellow citizens were picked up.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Nothing different. Germany had a free press before Hitler.

There was a very fragmented left opposition to the right. The KPD (Communists) were nearly as opposed to the Socialist government as the Nazis and the rest of the right were. Most Germans were terrified of "Bolshevism". The "moderates" were either apathetic or saw the Nazis as protecting them from the Communists. The capitalists and the military thought they could control Hitler and backed him. Almost everyone thought that Hitler couldn't last.

After Hitler came to power through democratic elections, and the Reichstag fire he began imprisoning the Communists and Socialists thus erasing the only real opposition. After that, the whole world economy, including Germany, came out of the depression. Hitler took credit for it and he became immensely popular.

The internet would have made no difference because he would have controlled it and muzzled it just like he did all of the media.