
The “Hitler at Home” stories of the pre-WWII American press - aaronbrethorst
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-american-medias-awkward-fawning-over-hitlers-taste-in-home-decor
======
coldtea
What's missing from the article is how a large part of the american public
(especially upper class) really loved Hitler, as a "great man of state" that
would fight against the communism threat.

Also before WWII, anti-semitism was much more widespread in the US than after
it.

In fact jew refuges from Germany were often denied entry into the US, as in
this classic tragic story:

[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267)

~~~
seiji
Industrialists in the US advocated for (and implemented!) forced society-level
eugenics as a way of creating a more "desirable" pool of employees for them to
exploit. Germany just copied the US, then the robber barons had to distance
themselves from the ideas of controlling humanity person-by-person.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Influence_on_Nazi_Germany)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Euthanasia_programs)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#/media/File:United_States_eugenics_advocacy_poster.jpg)
— "Every 7 1/2 minutes a high grade person is born in the US" almost sounds
like modern tech/startup "some people are actually just better than others"
rhetoric.

~~~
mseebach
> Industrialists in the US advocated for (and implemented!) forced society-
> level eugenics

That's a pretty revisionist phrasing. Eugenics had a much broader base in
society than _anyone_ , regardless of politics, should be comfortable with.

From the wikipedia page you link to:

"Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community. By 1928 there
were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading
schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the
curriculum."

"By 1910, there was a large and dynamic network of scientists, reformers and
professionals engaged in national eugenics projects and actively promoting
eugenic legislation."

"Public acceptance in the U.S. was the reason eugenic legislation was passed.
Almost 19 million people attended the Panama–Pacific International Exposition
in San Francisco, open for 10 months from February 20 to December 4, 1915."

~~~
seiji
But legislation and implementation was largely backed by the Rockefellers,
Rothschilds, Carnegies, and the other shadowy economic 0.001% people of their
day.

(citations left as an exercise for the reader)

------
amoruso
This kind of thing still happens. I'll bet if you dug into the history of
those Hitler pieces, you'd find out the Nazis paid some PR firm to arrange
those articles. That's how it happens now. I'm sure it was the same then.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-
only-remaining-online-copy-of-vogues-asma-al-assad-profile/250753/)

[http://www.thenation.com/article/professors-paid-qaddafi-
pro...](http://www.thenation.com/article/professors-paid-qaddafi-providing-
positive-public-relations/)

~~~
rdtsc
This is very common. Brutal and dictatorial regimes often buy PR and lobbying
from K street, also put ads in magazines.

If you see "Uzbekistan: A misunderstood gem" (just an example) touting how
great it is, and how torture we hear about is all fabricated lies, in full
page add in Foreign Affairs, it is obvious what is going on. But they can of
course be more subtle and are buy academics, like you showed in the links.
Those professors seem to the outside world as "independent"
thinkers/researchers. So if they then start publishing papers on "Benefits of
business development in Central Asia" mentioning Uzbekistan as a great place
to do business, it is a bit less obvious what is happening. Someone might get
fooled.

This also happens with climate and other major areas that affect powerful
interests.

~~~
amoruso
Yeah it's bad.

Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention Walter Duranty. He was writing
around the time of these Hitler articles. As far as I know, no one paid him to
do what he did - he just did it for the sake of journalist activism or
something. There's a lot of that too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty)

------
nsns
Well, I guess with a bit of anachronism and hindsight anything could be made
to look sensational and exciting.

~~~
coldtea
The whole point of the article is that hindsight should have already been
there at 1939 -- 6 years after Hitler came to power, with Main Kampf already
published, with the Kristallnacht and tons of other signs...

~~~
allendoerfer
Could it really have been there? Remember how the US looked back in these
days: The US had to invent its "moral high ground" and chose to be against
racism all of a sudden mostly because it had to justify the costs of WWII.

I am an outsider but I could imagine, that this artificially introduced moral
is part of the reason why racism and other problems are still big in the US:
The people generally believe that they already have the moral high ground and
after all won against the evil. It is much easier to handle 800k+ refugees
like Germany will do this year, when your moral self-awareness is a bit more
toned down to say the least and you still think you owe the world.

~~~
philwelch
Pearl Harbor was the only justification needed in the United States for the
costs of World War II, and anti-Japanese racism was a massive part of the war
propaganda at the time. Of course, too many discussions of the war run into
another sort of racism--a Eurocentrism that forgets that the war also happened
on the other side of the world, and for a much longer time at that.

~~~
allendoerfer
Pearl Harbor is part of the reason for anti-nazi propaganda: America was
mostly isolationistic or even pacifistic at that time (maybe not everything
was bad back in the days?) and the people had to be convinced why they would
want to fight in Europe while they were being attacked by Japan.

~~~
mtviewdave
People often forget that it was Germany that declared war on the United
States. Isolationism (and even pacifism) rarely survives when one is on the
receiving end of an act of war.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States_\(1941\))

------
protomyth
I had a set of atlases from 1937. It was amazingly complementary towards
Germany's leadership, but did mention that people of certain religions and
races should avoid traveling there. I'm still in awe of how people can
compartmentalize things to the point of paradox.

~~~
philwelch
Do you get the same sense when you see advertisements for Emirates or Qatar
Airlines, or advertisements and guidebooks for tourism to places like Dubai
and Qatar?

~~~
protomyth
I honestly don't know. I don't really see a lot of advertisements for the gulf
and its not a place I want to travel. Sure seems popular with the rich though.

~~~
philwelch
Fair enough, but consider that, at least before the war, Germany was still
thought of as, well, Germany--a decently well-developed country with lots of
culture and history. In other words, a reasonable tourist destination. In
1937, passenger travel between the US and Germany was popular enough to
justify a regular line for the Hindenberg, until it burst into flames.

Remember that our current perception of Nazi Germany is largely based on (a)
human rights abuses that largely happened during the Second World War, (b) the
fact that we were on opposing sides of that war, and (c) the fact that Nazis
don't have any influential sympathizers left. This isn't to say that the Nazis
weren't as bad as commonly thought, but they were certainly not unique in
such.

~~~
protomyth
Evil is not unique, but Hitler and his bunch earned their place in history
with their mad genocide. They started before WWII and continued to its final
days. Stalin, our ally, was not an innocent and killed millions. The 20th
century is all of history wrapped in the shiny efficiency of better
technology.

People will ignore quite a lot that conflicts with their desired perception.
It is amazingly hard for the a being so built to pattern match to break from
patterns. Russia was trading with Germany up until they were attacked.

On a personal level, I see celebrities going to places that have awful human
rights record then come back to the US and tell us how bad we are. I have
little use for hypocrisy in this life. Yes, Germany was popular before the war
which just means their are plenty of ignorant (both ill-informed and
willfully) and useful idiots in the world.

------
anti-shill
what has been shoved down the memory hole is that hitler was a stooge/front
man for the upper class and the corporations...and that was why the media here
loved him....they always love those at the top...

read the essay called 'I was Hitler's Boss'...it's online...published
anonymously in the 1930s, this essay makes clear that the general idea of the
nazis and the third reich was already in place before hitler was even hired by
the reichswehr...the most well-known hitler biographer Kershaw identified the
author of the essay as Karl Mayr, who was indeed hitler's boss..

read the essay...this is what it says:

the german upper class & corporations were afraid that the same thing that was
happening in russia during the bolshevik revolution was going to happen in
germany...and indeed there were dozens of burgeoning worker's populist parties
springing up...and what did those parties want? To disempower the rich and
powerful...so the rich and powerful began using the german army to spy on and
subvert these populist uprisings...they hired hitler because he was a war hero
(although recent books make it clear that hitler did not deserve his iron
cross and was known as a brown noser among the troops during WW1).

They hired hitler and put him to work spying on these working class parties
that were the enemies of the rich and powerful.

As mayr writes, when hitler was hired, he was basically a pauper, and was just
a lost dog looking for a master...didn't care squat about jews or anything
like that...but the reichswehr and the upper class were planning to make the
jews a substitute scapegoat for the rich, as mayr explains...the jews were a
big part of the educated class, and those were a big part of the bolshevik
revolution....so the planners of the third reich has already set their cap for
the jews when hitler was first hired....

hitler was indeed born with an undescended testicle, which made him an
outcast, mayr explains....so when he was a boy he wandered the hills making
speeches...that talent came to the fore during his spying on the populist
parties...and so the reichswehr and their corporate backers had found their
talented orator to lead a fake-populist version of the true-populist workers
parties that the upper class/corporations feared.

Now you know why hitler was actually quite popular with the media...the media
is and always has been supported by advertising purchases by corporations...

~~~
thrownaway2424
Not a bad rant, but too many ellipses, and went off the rails when you started
talking about Hitler's nuts.

~~~
anti-shill
read the essay

------
happyscrappy
There is no nuance in gas chambers.

~~~
nmcfarl
I’m willing to accept the claim that there’s not a lot of nuance to WWII era
Germany’s actions and motives, etc. ("Schindler’s List" notwithstanding.) But
to claim theres no nuance to the people fighting against Germany, seems
ahistorical.

~~~
happyscrappy
The question was about levels of anti-semitism. The highest level is gas
chambers.

~~~
rza
The question was actually about the portrayal of US motives during WW2.

------
mineshaftgap
Do Europeans actually believe that the main problem with Blacks in the US is
racism?

~~~
coldtea
Do Americans actually believe it's not?

Do people understand systemic injustice, and what coming from being a nation
of slaves merely 150 years ago, and having legal injustice until merely 40
years ago and implicit injustice until today can do to a people?

~~~
mineshaftgap
A mere 70 years ago Jews were being chased through Europe and killed like
dogs. My only point was that there are bigger problems than racism. The roots
may be from Jim Crow and such but the lack of progress is disheartening and
seemingly intractable.

~~~
coldtea
> _A mere 70 years ago Jews were being chased through Europe and killed like
> dogs._

However all of them were white, educated (a lot of them highly educated), and
managed to migrate to places where they fit with white society and were not
persecuted for being jews anymore. Blacks didn't have that.

> _The roots may be from Jim Crow and such but the lack of progress is
> disheartening and seemingly intractable._

Well, lack of progress is relative. From just-freed slaves, peniless and
uneducated, now there is a decent black middle class.

But if your grantparents were dead poor (think Jim Crow blacks in the South in
the 20's and 40's), then you don't get to jump that far in a 3 generations.

Especially if your father had to face discrimination (in schooling, hiring,
loans etc) up until the seventies or even more.

Latinos have the same problems.

Jews, Italians, Irish not so much -- they started from much better position
than slaves, and they are white so could fit in to business etc better.
Besides they didn't originate from places like Alabama, Mississippi, like most
of blacks who migrated North did etc -- they came to NY, Chicago etc.

