The holocaust and world war 2 had nothing to do with wether guns were available to the german population or not. 

I was debating with myself wether to open that discussion or not, because it is a ugly can of worms for me. The Holocaust and WW2 are never very far away from the collective german mind.. it is not easy. Whenever I read or research its history, I can't really grasp how they were able to rationalize genocide, to perfect the process and logistics of killing millions. And how so many germans after the war claimed to never have been Nazis and to have had no knowledge about the deathcamps.. and so many got away with it. If you research trials and verdicts for warcrimes, it is appaling how many got clemency from the American occupation administration after a short time and were released. By then, the cold war was in full swing and after its founding the new federal german republic was integrated into the west and joined Nato 1955, which gradually lead to a transformation into what Germany is today. The experience of WW2 changed Germany and Europe forever though. But some characteristics and stereotypes are rooted too deeply to get rid off, and one of them is loving order and rules and trusting the authorities. That is still true, but the german mentality of today is not the same as 75 years ago. You can not compare it.

As to reasons why Hitler was so popular and was able to do all he did - that can not be answered shortly. Many different reasons acummulated, loss world war 1 and the treaty of Versailles with its extensive restrictions left the German populace with a resentment against the treaty and ultimately contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler. The form of government after ww1 in Germany (Weimarer Republic) was a unstable democracy with too many loopholes for dictatorial power for the president in cases for emergency and was abused, it had too many political parties and ultimately failed. The great depression and world wide recession fell during that time as well. Hitler was elected as chancelor in january 1933, and the people were happy to have a strong leader that wanted to bring Germany back to its glory, get rid of the treaty of Versailles and enable the people to feel proud again. Democracy was well, disregarded as a failed experiment.  And the rest of Europe was not overly against a strong Germany, either.

It is not possible to draw a completely black and white picture in regard to the holocaust either. In the last few years, historians have started to research voluntary colaboration with the Germans in france, poland, ukraine, italy.. they had so much support, and without that support Hitler would have never been able to go through with it. The Vichy regime in France opted to cooperate completly with Germany in the deportation of jews without being prompted. The french rounded up the jews in paris and handed them over to the SS.

All in all, nobody was against the holocaust, not the germans and not the rest of Europe, and knowing about it relativly early did not prompt the US to join the war, either. There are no simple answers available.

Hahahahaha, Utemia, I am not arguing on how WWII and the holocaust happened, simply that it seems to come down to a trust in the authorities.

lol Silver and Jade. It is all connected. Trusting the authorities in contemporary Germany will not lead to another dictatorship though, rest assured.

That was not meant for you, Silver, but for taltamir and his poster. I should have specified that, sorry.

actually it should really be "anymore" rather than "Again"... because abuse of power has been an ongoing thing. I can name you multiple abuses of power in the USA, Australia, UK, germany, and china and russia in the past year.

And I try to limit my exposure to those because they are depressing. (Thats why I can't tell you about power abuses in the other countries of the world)

besides which, while genocide is quite horrible, it is not the ONLY form of power abuse available.

Once, twice, three times a posting...

Double post.

I am actually not a native US citizens. I emigrated to the USA, and I have seen trust in authority backfire elsewhere in the world. All human rights stem from peoples ability to defend themselves with force against would be opressors. In other words, weapons.

Forever is a very long time. look how europe has been appeasing any would be dictator. look how the world stood idly by as genocides occur everywhere in the world. I was a little over 10 when I first saw a genocide, and after years of being drilled about how the holocaust changed the world (I was in israel at the time), I waited and wait and never did the "world" do anything to help. I have since seen several other genocides... Rowanda being a prime example.

Where were your "forever changed europeans" then?

You don't even have an argument, you are living in fantasy world where bad things never happen when you trust in authority. Again and again it happens, during OUR livetimes, but you bring about 70 year old examples and pretend that they changed everything forever and ignore any proof to the contrary, including all the genocides occuring in your lifetime.

You have a valid point with all that you said. The world does seem to stand idly by, and I wish I knew how to change that. But tell me, how would you react? Which army would you send to interfere? There is no worldpolice that actually can stop something, all one can realistically strive for is preventing it in your own country. And that is being done.

But tell me, which dictator do you mean with

addendum to 44: I said earlier that we as a people try to stop genocide from occuring ever again, but that is a very idealistic and sadly an unrealistic goal. Politics and geopolitical entanglements, history and globalization seem to supersede human rights all too often.

The US is a prime example that war is good business, and I could phrase a conspiracy theory about how some western industrialized countries do not really wanting certain civil wars in Africa (ie kongo)  to stop because the chaos enables them to buy cheap natural resources and to sell their weapons to the warring factions as a bonus.

But what I said about the Holocaust and its effect for contemporary Europe is also true. There are no perfect answers.

For those interested in the result of an EMP (however unlikely, or likely) might find the EMP Commission's report interesting.

http://empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf

I agree with utemia there.  "Nature, red in tooth and claw" is an ideology -- humans are not as violent nor as selfish as conservatives think they are.  We just tell stories about how violent we are to intimidate other people and how dangerous other people are so we'll look to the State for protection. 

Humans actually have more adaptations for working together than almost any other species besides ants (emotional mirroring, an instinct to specialize that leads to division of labor and trade, and language).  We're not going to have anarchy; organization is going to arise.  It just matters whether we come out with a toxic organization like Stalinism or a better one.