Thanks for the book references. It will take me a while to track them down (may even need to "поиск"). Kershaw looks especially interesting. I have been reading Zweig, Weil, and a book by someone whose name I no longer recall (that I had thought had been a source for Der Untergang but is not listed in the latter's WP page) which I suspect may have been slightly self-serving. (also: Arendt and Lewis as references in the wider context)

However, as I said before, I am less interested in what the actual intentions were and more interested in how they were sold (cf. Linebarger). So emotional experiences are just fine — I don't believe rational arguments have ever had much to do with human politics[1]. And I prefer speeches because they are primary sources of propaganda[2]. It seems we'll have to agree to disagree, here.

We do agree on the german resent of france[3]. (Ironically, the author of the Hassgesang gegen England would first get scapegoated (by the equally patriotic but less extreme) in 1918, and then fail to be rehabilitated in the early thirties: because he was jewish.) However, in the context of 1943, it was fine to defend the Abendland, because most of it which was not neutral was, like france, under military occupation, client government, or both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany#/media/File:World...

We also agree that the nazi ideology was implicitly totalitarian from the beginning. Consider Triumph des Willens[4]. However, 13 January 1943 was when the implicit and foreign became explicit and domestic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war#Germany

Yes, Max Mustermann is the teutonic "citoyen lambda" or "John Doe". Maybe I am too optimistic[5], but the question of consent[6] is never moot. No matter that anglophones love to paint their enemy du jour as iconified by a single person[7], Hitler wasn't about to personally beat up everyone who badmouthed the Reich, it took large numbers of people who believed in him to make his system work. See my previous Linebarger quote, about the point when no one would take orders from Mr. Davis, or consider the point in 1991 when no one would take orders from Comrade Yanayev.

We also agree that the Nazis got worse and worse as time went on. I'm interested in the shape of that slope. Some slopes are slippery ("We are the greatest people in the greatest country and it doesn't matter what we do to accomplish the greater good"), others not so slippery ("If you start disrespecting property rights by abolishing slavery, you'll end up with communism"). My guess is that, like coke dealers who partake of their own goods, the judgement of people who wind up believing their own propaganda is less than optimal.

Again, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the purpose of transferring bones from one graveyard to another. I am interested in history more for the purpose of making predictions about the present (which does not mean I don't appreciate getting corrected on my understanding of it! Having poor probabilities leads to poor betting...) and less for its own sake. Figuring out how to avoid repeating history would be most excellent, but at the moment I am cynical enough to believe that "those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it." In any case, having gotten that off my chest, I'm happy to limit myself to the historical detail of 1919-1945.

> interpreting their violence as patriotism

Very well put. Even fools learn from experience[9]. The wise attempt to learn from someone else's experience.

[1] note that even the ancient greeks distinguished rhetoric from logic. I would also be willing to bet that NSDAP speeches were pro-communist exactly between 1939 and 1941, and anti-communist outside those dates. The convenient thing about Two Minutes Hates is that the $OTHER is always variable.

[2] not having an internet and explicit social graph, the Nazis had to make do with radio and loudspeaker truck.

For the former:

https://www.stern.de/politik/geschichte/sportpalast-rede-die...

in which Hitler plays the victim card hard. (but neglects to mention that the program for lifting the german Volk up involves putting others two meters under. Generalplan Ost would appear seven years later.)

[3] compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24105559

[4] US fervour for the first Iraq war reminded me of nothing so much as Triumph des Willens. They treated going to war as if they were rooting for a basketball championship. (Der weiße Rausch, on the other hand, is not half bad.)

https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDes...

[5] Much of my current optimism may be a result of the US military's allegiance to pieces of paper over people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412986 .

[6] Whose consent is another interesting question. In 1984, proles, like animals, are free. The Inner Party only needs to fear, and hence control, the Outer Party, roughly 13% of the population. (Luckily for them, Airstrip One has a long tradition of middle class norm self-enforcement. Even we today ask why we would need watch cameras in villages, because spiessig grandmothers keep themselves busy minding everyone elses' business.)

[7] Hitler, of course, would have agreed with the single-leader-principle. But he also, earlier, had agreed with the communists that no matter which one of them controlled the future, centrists such as the social democrats would have no place in it. In any case, here I'm thinking of "The Pope" or "Bonaparte", etc. (Come to think of it, this fear of a united continent may even be logical: if the continent is not full of balanced powers playing, from the english viewpoint, "let's you and him fight", they might turn their military spend from armies to a navy, which would be a direct threat to Oceania's ability to waive rules by ruling waves.)

[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23895444

[9] Körner notes in one of his books that the UK and US, having fought a war to destroy german and japanese militarism forever, then complained bitterly when the germans and japanese refused to join the Iraq adventure.

Edit: I think a point where we've been talking past each other is on the question of the many vs. the few. I agree that the few were responsible[a], not the many. I just happen to believe that if one wants to avoid a repetition, it is much easier (though still more difficult than many countries care to do, as it involves education) to keep the many from following genocidal totalitarians than it is to expect the few (of whom some would be genocidal totalitarians given the opportunity) to avoid climbing the greasy pole.

[a] Responsibility is a key reason that to be recognised as a Party to a Conflict, a group exercising the ultima ratio regum has to have a command structure. Lack of command would make it very difficult to know who ought to be sent to the ICC.