When Everyone is a Nazi, No One is a Nazi

Take the word of a Nazi for it, here on Babylon Bee:

Actual Nazi Struggling To Stand Out Now That Everyone's A Nazi
The Babylon Bee | 9 May 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8UwMCeD6jU

He feels undervalued as Nazi with swastika armband, now that having a Tesla can get you a swastika (graffitid) on the car. Or being known to have voted for Trump, on the garage door.

There is a certain situation this applies to a bit specially. Being a Nazi in Nazi Germany. Or, in Deutsches Reich for ten years (same actual name as Kaiserreich and Weimar Republic) and then Großdeutsches Reich for the last two.

You could obviously be a Nazi back then because you enjoyed putting Jews you disliked into difficulty. You could be a Nazi because you enjoyed putting Gipsies into difficulty. But chances are, you were more likely to be a Nazi because you thought workers should have fair pay and illegal abortions should be stopped (and not by legalising them). Larry Alex Taunton said "all of them" (list of ten most evil people, he forgot some of the Deformers) "would have voted Democrat" (obviously, his sense of Christian decency is pretty obviously tied to the Republican party). But with Adolf Hitler it is not obviously untrue. Apart from the fact Adolf was a Commie in early 1919, and Commies are all for voting Democrat in the US these days ... there is another point. John Denver was a Democrat. People like John Denver were Nazis in Germany. I don't say John Denver was a Nazi. I say people like him were a few decades earlier on, and East of Atlantic and Rhine.

The Wandervögel were certainly banned and being actively suppressed between 1933 and 1935. The Austrian Wandervögel were not banned under Dollfuss, but they were under Schuschnigg. However, it's not as if Hitler and von Schuschnigg* hated all the ideals of the Wandervögel. It's just that the Wandervögel were being forced to get into the Hitlerjugend instead in Germany, while in Austria, von Schuschnigg* didn't like the apoliticism of them. Dollfuss did, though.

It's a bit as if you from a certain time on could only be a hippie by being a Democrat. Or a singer like John Denver by being a Democrat ... wait ... someone said Taylor Swift is complying?

Most Germans in Germany, and certainly most Austrians in Austria had very little personal involvement in the War guilt of World War II, such as it may be, they ultimately once it was starte clearly supported a hard fight against the Soviets, and I think they were perfectly right, the Soviet victory in the East was an awful thing for most (not necessarily for some Jews, though). But they had not opted to kill civilian Poles or Russians or Jews who were just in the way of an SS battallion. I publically prayed an RIP on FB over Otto Carius, whom some of my friends commemorated. He had been stationed near Riga. There had been deportations to Stutthof near Riga. Before I did so, I checked he wasn't involved in rounding up any civilians, specifically Jews. He's more typical of Germans back then than Dr. Mengele.

I have seen Jews sad at my expressing grief over Germans and especially Austrian casualties at the end of World War II.

Pretending they all of them "had it coming" is like exonerating German actual cruelties against Soviet civilians because they had participated in the Russian Revolution, which was a horrible thing.

On a party in Copenhagen in 2004, I was challenged to admit the Russians had saved Europe from Hitler. I answer "sure, but the Germans saved Europe from Stalin" .... both armies had units that committed cruelties against civilians, the XXth C. was a horror because of the belief in total war. But that doesn't mean the XXIst C. needs to be a continued celebration of some of those acts, just because of others of them.

While, as an Austrofascist, I feel shame that Schuschnigg forbade the Wandervögel (and pride that Dollfuss didn't!), if I get lumped with Nazis because I reject the idea of killing German speaking civilians in either of the two German countries***, I feel this is kind of "making everyone a Nazi" (except for some attacking Nazis). It's somewhat egregious with someone who is honouring a man murdered by Nazis.** Look, I honour Dollfuss, not Planetta!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Michel Garicoïtz
14.V.2025

In pago Betharram, dioecesis Baionensis, sancti Michaelis Garicoits, Confessoris, Congregationis Presbyterorum Missionariorum a Sacro Corde Jesu Fundatoris, apostolico zelo insignis, quem Pius Papa Duodecimus Sanctorum fastis adscripsit.

* Titulature de politesse. Jusqu'en 1919, il était encore Edler von Schuschnigg. Par contre, pendant sa carrière politique, il était comme tout le monde dans la première république un bourgeois nommé Schuschnigg. (I don't know what "titulature de politesse" is called in English, sorry)
** Otto Planetta killed Engelbert Dollfuss, out of Nazi loyalties, trying to make a Putsch for the Anschluss, on 25th of July 1934. His friends stopped Dollfuss from receiving medical care, so he bled to death. Planetta was then basically executed with "garrote vil" (or its Austrian cousin Würgegalgen), on 31st of July. Under the rules of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, 45 people were executed, the first for arson and the last for killing a lady in order to commit a theft of food. Planetta was number 13. It's no accident that a biography about Dollfuss calls him "Mussolini's Friend, Hitler's Enemy" ... I can't find it, but here is Dollfuss: An Austrian Patriot
*** Dollfuss, in reference to the name "Deutschland" (back then a nickname for "Deutsches Reich") considered Austria as "ein zweites aber besseres deutsches Land"