> Behalf Of Alberto Monteiro
> Bradford DeLong wrote:
> I think you are missing the point. They were talking about
> the *definition*
> of totalitarian. Totalitarian does not equate Horror. These
> are two *correlated*
> but *distinct* terms.
>
> Nazism was probably [Pol Pot might have been worse] the
> worst regime of
> human history.Totalitarianism is horrible. But a regime
> might be more
> totalitarian than nazism, and still be more palatable.
>
> Alberto Monteiro
This is exactly it, Alberto. The Nazis were surely horrific beyond
words in the territory that they captured. But that doesn't make
Hitler's government fit the definition of totalitarian because, first,
it was conquered territory - Hitler was attempting to rule places he
had conquered, not his own society. And second, as you said,
totalitarian is not the same thing as horrible. All totalitarian
governments are horrible, true. But killing lots of people doesn't
make you a totalitarian ruler. Hitler wasn't killing Jews as a way to
rule his population through fear - he was killing Jews because that
was his _goal_ - he wanted to kill Jews. That wasn't part of
instituting a program of totalitarian government. Similarly, his
behavior in the captured territories was, in a sense, focused. He
didn't infiltrate Poland, Occupied France, and Eastern Europe with
informers and secret police and so on. He just killed everyone who
was inconvenient or objectionable to him and moved on. To some extent
he didn't have _time_ to establish a totalitarian state - he ruled all
of those territories directly through the military through brutal
military means, but never went ahead and established the apparatus of
totalitarian government. No show trials or public purges or things
like that. That's why we said that his government did _become_
totalitarian in 1944 - it wasn't any _worse_, it's just that in
response to the attempted coup he did precisely that - use the SS as
an instrument to strike terror in the German population and rule
Germany through fear.
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
