Uncle Obsessed with World War II Somehow Blind to Encroaching International Fascism
Uncle Obsessed with World War II Somehow Blind to Encroaching International Fascism
Local amateur historian and occasional beloved family member Paul Poppavich vehemently dismisses news of fascism’s rising international tide, despite an encyclopedic knowledge of World War II history.
You're viewing a single thread.
Tons of US fascists fought in Europe. From their perspective, they weren’t fighting against fascism, they were fighting against Germany.
Also, when it comes to US reactions to fascism from the 1920s on, WW2 was very much the EXCEPTION, not the rule.
People like to point to the Silver Legion and Jim Crow and such but the native fascist parties didn't even have as much support as they do today.
If you want to argue that segregation was enough to make America a fascist state I wouldn't disagree but Americans at the time simply didn't see it that way, even if some of them liked what that Hitler guy was saying about autarky and making more white babies.
Anti-semitism of the kind that Hitler was spouting was very much a mainstream idea, not just in Germany and Austria but all across Europe and the US. Hitler was merely the most radical one that came to power.
It's easy to frame WWII as the battle between democracy and fascism, but the reality is a lot messier and more complicated than that.More like the American fascists hid in the closet after Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack silenced anymore isolationists, some of whom are fascists sympathetic to Nazi Germany and were even funded by Berlin.