For those who cannot find a copy of this book, I can lend you one.
Hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Use the share or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
For those who are not paying subscribers, consider joining us. I hope to stir some good discussion on the subjects that we will be tackling in this book.
Mass politics, though? Maybe as a PR effort. But weren’t both Fac and Com rooted in the belief that “science” and the human brain had triumphed over emotion, religion, etc and was able to plan everything and enact it by force of will without having to resort to profiteering capitalism and creative destruction? While the message was about benefits for the masses, these movements seemed to me as sort of utopian, grandiose and reliant on the planning and leadership skills of special elites able their fellow cadres.
Marxists are Materialists, so yes. Fascists too rejected "RETVRN" in favour of scientific and technological progress. Think "Italian Futurists" like Marinetti.
Hitler was an advocate of technology, and despised sentimentality and nostalgia. Someone once suggested he be photographed on a horse, and he responded with disdain that he travelled by automobile. He also disliked all feudal relics, titles of nobility, or anything from the remote past. He saw himself and his party as democratic and modern.
Hitler might have had that mentality, but Heinrich Himmler certainly did not. Himmler and the Thule Society headquartered in Munich, which bankrolled the early DAP/NSDAP, were very interested in reviving ancient Germanic traditions, including neopaganism.
We don't disagree. Himmler didn't like traditional German things either, but he wanted to create a synthetic, pre-Christian and anti-Christian religion, supposedly based on ancient Germanic images and practices. I don't believe that Hitler was an enthusiastic supporter of Himmler's initiative, but he let Himmler do it. Two different ways to reject the older German political and cultural heritage.
I know it's tempting to delve into the subject of Nazis, but let's do our best to remain on topic for now, lest this entire comments section get flooded.
True, because the Red Republic is what creates them, so they are in embryo form here, but looming over all of it in hindsight. I just went to the bookshelf and pulled my annotated and scribbled in copy of Mitchell to get up to speed.
Understood. My point was more about "fascist" imagery and esthetics being modern, modernist, radical, revolutionary and advocating technology, speed, dynamism. Fascism was not conservative. It was an alternate radicalism. Of course, tactically, fascists made political common cause with genuine conservatives, who also hated and feared communists. Franco was not a fascist, and neither was Horthy. Both had fascists as part of their political alliances, but unlike in Germany, in Spain and Hungary, conservative nationalists took power and marginalized their fascist radicals.
Hence the compelling architecture and aesthetic of so many fascist movements - they didn't just try to recreate Rome or Greece but instead leaned into new materials and new designs.
That's a function of of two convergent factors. The Marxists, according to their holy scriptures, had to draw their leadership and their rank and file from the "proletariat"- urban, unionized industrial blue collar working classes. In the context of mass industrial war, those urban working classes were not conscripted into the armed forces precisely because they are necessary to make weapons of total war, and thus unavailable for military service, but concentrated, organized, and radicalized in the precise places needed for revolutionary Marxists to overthrow the old order, notwithstanding their overall numerical superiority by harnessing them in the centers of power.
"... events can spiral out of control when disasters such as the First World War happen (especially when you lose a war)." Good intro post. Eager to read along. Will try to keep up in the book.
Always a fan of the book club (many other book discussions are self aggrandizing and off putting). Just a minor footnote, Finland also had a Bolshevik revolution but was put down almost immediately (the often overlooked short lived Finnish civil war) that just reinforces the point that this was a memeplex that completely spread across Europe (pre-internet as well for all those ppl who love to blame the internet/social media for all their woes)
Yeah, Finland had a bloody civil war too. Lots of Red Finns ended up in Minnesota and Upstate Michigan. Finnish-Americans played a huge role in the American Communist Party.
'The reactionary politics that followed the First World War understood that the pre-war elites shot themselves in the foot by ceding these masses to reformist and/or revolutionary forces. Fascism was the vehicle in which the masses could be attracted to reactionary politics out of fear of or disgust with Bolshevism. The rise of Fascism was a belated recognition that the elitist politics of old were dead and buried, and then mass politics would rule the day.'
Perfectly true, but surely the roots of mass politics extend back to the French Revolution and the revolutionary wars? Throughout Europe governments organised mass movements to support the ancien regime. Both revolutionaries and insurrectionary nationalists attempted to organise their own too. At least some of these movements were arguably proto-fascist to some degree, such as the Black Hundreds in Russia.
WWI itself was about mobilising the masses, putting then in uniform and subjecting them to military discipline etc. The war was, at least to a degree, an alternative to revolution at home. Post-WW1 mass politics developed, extended and radicalised the masses using demobilised veterans, injecting militarism into the blood stream of the peacetime body politic.
My own take on WW1 is Diplomatic scheming getting out of control over years and the Color Books (Diplomatic histories and papers of the time) bear this out.
Have a memoir by the Raven of Zurich himself...Felix Somary (legendary banker and counsellor to captains of industry, heads of state etc). Contains a few anecdotes about a mission he undertook to talk London, Vienna etc out of war a few years before it kicked off. It is clear that they (the people at the top) included plenty who saw where it was headed but the apex hierarchs were convinced that they knew best. The difference today is that most at the top are now a lot dumber than their predecessors and the scheming is inspired (at least in part) by the entertainment industry.
Commenting while reading, and I know you don't mean it this way, but you accidentally one of my pet peeves and liberals do this all the time so I'm calling it out
> On a per capita basis, Bavaria tops both its neighbour Baden-Württemberg and industrial powerhouse North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s largest and most southern state is an economic behemoth.
> At the same time, Bavarians have the reputation for being conservative in both politics and culture.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard something like this in an op-ed, _I'd_ have the highest GDP in Europe. I've heard it so much, living where I do. "Wow, Texas' economy survived covid while everyone else is grappling with business shut-downs and lock-downs. But it sucks that they're so conservative, we need to fix that"
People aggressively refuse to recognize causality in these observations, and work tirelessly to destroy the source of prosperity
Commenting while reading, and I know you don't mean it this way, but you accidentally one of my pet peeves and liberals do this all the time so I'm calling it out
> On a per capita basis, Bavaria tops both its neighbour Baden-Württemberg and industrial powerhouse North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s largest and most southern state is an economic behemoth.
> At the same time, Bavarians have the reputation for being conservative in both politics and culture.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard something like this in an op-ed, _I'd_ have the highest GDP in Europe. I've heard it so much, living where I do. "Wow, Texas' economy survived covid while everyone else is grappling with business shut-downs and lock-downs. But it sucks that they're so conservative, we need to fix that"
People aggressively refuse to recognize causality in these observations, and work tirelessly to destroy the source of prosperity
Very neat! I am new to the book club series, how does commenting work? Should I hold off on discussing the first chapter / not spoil anything until the next post?
Very excited for this series. The commotions around Bavaria and Munich in the early 20th Century are very important for people to understand. Without this they are often left confused and ignorant on the context behind events that come later.
Yes and most helpful in understanding the potential rerun in America, by God 🇺🇸 we’ll do the whole Eastern Front both sides here! Niccolo the 🇺🇸 Elites WANT THIS so you can Pace on Elite theory.
Since they were name-checked at the beginning, just adding a few links on Mussolini & Franco that readers here will likely appreciate -- in the same spirit as this post:
Jun 15, 2023·edited Jun 15, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Oxford University Press publishes an extensive series with the title "A Very Short Introduction to..." (fill in the blank) that has I believe about 100 titles now. Almost every title I have read is excellent. You would be a good candidate to author one with your love of history and ferreting out the details never addressed in common knowledge. Just in what you have written so far about Bavaria gives me a clue about why Hitler chose the state for his attempt at a coup.
In that light I also think of the joyous faces of the public that welcomed Hitler...one can appreciate the idea of stability and security at last bringing elation.
[Comment: Normie timeline is too generous for Anglo countries - it is basically a war on the western front, against the UK and eventually the USA. Normies dont know (5).]
urbanization, combined with increasing levels of literacy and economic inequality, laid --> urbanization (combined with increasing levels of literacy and economic inequality) laid
The first thing that struck me was the befuddled reaction of party politicians, who seemed constantly on their back foot during the early days. As the months went by, and events turned to parliamentary and bureaucratic infighting, they were more in their element and easily outmaneuvered Eisner. Eisner and the councils didn’t have a deep staff to take over the bureaucracy, and call it the Bavarian deep state if you wish, left in place it hamstrung the radicals. American right populists are in a similar position. If they ever take over the guvmit, they’d be up to their nose in swamp water in a couple months. There is no shadow government to step in.
Part of the problem for Eisner, of course, as the months went by, is that he and the councils did not have a deep reservoir of support, which would have sustained them.
There could be. If the leadership of the "right populists" was intelligent, it could do its homework, be prepared, and recruit the personnel it needed. The Plum Book needs to be filled in every administration. Executive recruitment is a known set of skills. There is nothing theoretically difficult about it. It could be done. It would take a legislative effort, and leadership of the government departments to shake up and change the permanent workforce, but an administration that came in knowing what actually had to be done, especially with a congressional majority, could do it.
We don’t have a government in DC Sir. We had Bureaucratic Feudalism that reached consensus-examples Iraq War,
get rid of Trump, get rid of Nixon.
Had. Not have.
Now we have Franchisees with Badges and Departmental Status they bandy about- bluff. As Franchisees you’re on your own until you make money- money a huge part of DC, especially as they sense it’s ending.
They’re not going to run.
They already walked.
Don’t fret about Deep State.
It’s about as Deep as STASI or HVA HQ day after the Wall fell.
For those who cannot find a copy of this book, I can lend you one.
Hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Use the share or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
For those who are not paying subscribers, consider joining us. I hope to stir some good discussion on the subjects that we will be tackling in this book.
Amazon has copy for $53.
Wow, I found a copy in a used bookstore a few years ago for $5.
eBook available here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691651118/revolution-in-bavaria-1918-1919#buy
Love the normie timeline!
Mass politics, though? Maybe as a PR effort. But weren’t both Fac and Com rooted in the belief that “science” and the human brain had triumphed over emotion, religion, etc and was able to plan everything and enact it by force of will without having to resort to profiteering capitalism and creative destruction? While the message was about benefits for the masses, these movements seemed to me as sort of utopian, grandiose and reliant on the planning and leadership skills of special elites able their fellow cadres.
Marxists are Materialists, so yes. Fascists too rejected "RETVRN" in favour of scientific and technological progress. Think "Italian Futurists" like Marinetti.
Hitler was an advocate of technology, and despised sentimentality and nostalgia. Someone once suggested he be photographed on a horse, and he responded with disdain that he travelled by automobile. He also disliked all feudal relics, titles of nobility, or anything from the remote past. He saw himself and his party as democratic and modern.
Hitler might have had that mentality, but Heinrich Himmler certainly did not. Himmler and the Thule Society headquartered in Munich, which bankrolled the early DAP/NSDAP, were very interested in reviving ancient Germanic traditions, including neopaganism.
We don't disagree. Himmler didn't like traditional German things either, but he wanted to create a synthetic, pre-Christian and anti-Christian religion, supposedly based on ancient Germanic images and practices. I don't believe that Hitler was an enthusiastic supporter of Himmler's initiative, but he let Himmler do it. Two different ways to reject the older German political and cultural heritage.
I know it's tempting to delve into the subject of Nazis, but let's do our best to remain on topic for now, lest this entire comments section get flooded.
True, because the Red Republic is what creates them, so they are in embryo form here, but looming over all of it in hindsight. I just went to the bookshelf and pulled my annotated and scribbled in copy of Mitchell to get up to speed.
Understood. My point was more about "fascist" imagery and esthetics being modern, modernist, radical, revolutionary and advocating technology, speed, dynamism. Fascism was not conservative. It was an alternate radicalism. Of course, tactically, fascists made political common cause with genuine conservatives, who also hated and feared communists. Franco was not a fascist, and neither was Horthy. Both had fascists as part of their political alliances, but unlike in Germany, in Spain and Hungary, conservative nationalists took power and marginalized their fascist radicals.
Hence the compelling architecture and aesthetic of so many fascist movements - they didn't just try to recreate Rome or Greece but instead leaned into new materials and new designs.
But the Fascists weren’t anything like the Reds, they were usually war buddies or younger soldiers who fought the Reds after WW1.
Even in Spain the Army were veterans of wars in Africa.
The Falangismas we’re almost a phenomenon of their own, very Catholic, not quite to Mussolini’s taste.
To clarify- the Fascists were almost always war veterans, this isn’t the case with the Reds.
That's a function of of two convergent factors. The Marxists, according to their holy scriptures, had to draw their leadership and their rank and file from the "proletariat"- urban, unionized industrial blue collar working classes. In the context of mass industrial war, those urban working classes were not conscripted into the armed forces precisely because they are necessary to make weapons of total war, and thus unavailable for military service, but concentrated, organized, and radicalized in the precise places needed for revolutionary Marxists to overthrow the old order, notwithstanding their overall numerical superiority by harnessing them in the centers of power.
Good post.
PR has a point here - the ones who didn’t fight were preached at by the shirkers with degrees.
Didn’t end well for the shirkers.
"... events can spiral out of control when disasters such as the First World War happen (especially when you lose a war)." Good intro post. Eager to read along. Will try to keep up in the book.
I'm also going to encourage you to participate in the comments when you think you can jump in.
Will do, as much as I can.
Always a fan of the book club (many other book discussions are self aggrandizing and off putting). Just a minor footnote, Finland also had a Bolshevik revolution but was put down almost immediately (the often overlooked short lived Finnish civil war) that just reinforces the point that this was a memeplex that completely spread across Europe (pre-internet as well for all those ppl who love to blame the internet/social media for all their woes)
Looking forward to it!
Yeah, Finland had a bloody civil war too. Lots of Red Finns ended up in Minnesota and Upstate Michigan. Finnish-Americans played a huge role in the American Communist Party.
I am impressed by the thoroughness of your knowledge. Few people ever pick up on the Red connection of the Finno-Americans.
Gus Hall the most prominent example. I hadn't known Finnish American commies were a thing, though. Interesting.
This explains a great deal about Minnesota and Michigan
excited to kick this one off
word up
With a handle like yours we are all entitled to expect some suitably intense and murky comments in the near future.
outstanding post. This is the kind of post that warrants a subscription. I learned a lot.
I appreciate the positive feedback, Robert.
'The reactionary politics that followed the First World War understood that the pre-war elites shot themselves in the foot by ceding these masses to reformist and/or revolutionary forces. Fascism was the vehicle in which the masses could be attracted to reactionary politics out of fear of or disgust with Bolshevism. The rise of Fascism was a belated recognition that the elitist politics of old were dead and buried, and then mass politics would rule the day.'
Perfectly true, but surely the roots of mass politics extend back to the French Revolution and the revolutionary wars? Throughout Europe governments organised mass movements to support the ancien regime. Both revolutionaries and insurrectionary nationalists attempted to organise their own too. At least some of these movements were arguably proto-fascist to some degree, such as the Black Hundreds in Russia.
WWI itself was about mobilising the masses, putting then in uniform and subjecting them to military discipline etc. The war was, at least to a degree, an alternative to revolution at home. Post-WW1 mass politics developed, extended and radicalised the masses using demobilised veterans, injecting militarism into the blood stream of the peacetime body politic.
At leas that is the way it seems to me.
My own take on WW1 is Diplomatic scheming getting out of control over years and the Color Books (Diplomatic histories and papers of the time) bear this out.
Have a memoir by the Raven of Zurich himself...Felix Somary (legendary banker and counsellor to captains of industry, heads of state etc). Contains a few anecdotes about a mission he undertook to talk London, Vienna etc out of war a few years before it kicked off. It is clear that they (the people at the top) included plenty who saw where it was headed but the apex hierarchs were convinced that they knew best. The difference today is that most at the top are now a lot dumber than their predecessors and the scheming is inspired (at least in part) by the entertainment industry.
Yes
Yes
And Yes we’re being governed by movie scripts
Once the gerontocrats go, the scripts will be replaced by video-games and tik-tok.
Commenting while reading, and I know you don't mean it this way, but you accidentally one of my pet peeves and liberals do this all the time so I'm calling it out
> On a per capita basis, Bavaria tops both its neighbour Baden-Württemberg and industrial powerhouse North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s largest and most southern state is an economic behemoth.
> At the same time, Bavarians have the reputation for being conservative in both politics and culture.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard something like this in an op-ed, _I'd_ have the highest GDP in Europe. I've heard it so much, living where I do. "Wow, Texas' economy survived covid while everyone else is grappling with business shut-downs and lock-downs. But it sucks that they're so conservative, we need to fix that"
People aggressively refuse to recognize causality in these observations, and work tirelessly to destroy the source of prosperity
Commenting while reading, and I know you don't mean it this way, but you accidentally one of my pet peeves and liberals do this all the time so I'm calling it out
> On a per capita basis, Bavaria tops both its neighbour Baden-Württemberg and industrial powerhouse North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s largest and most southern state is an economic behemoth.
> At the same time, Bavarians have the reputation for being conservative in both politics and culture.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard something like this in an op-ed, _I'd_ have the highest GDP in Europe. I've heard it so much, living where I do. "Wow, Texas' economy survived covid while everyone else is grappling with business shut-downs and lock-downs. But it sucks that they're so conservative, we need to fix that"
People aggressively refuse to recognize causality in these observations, and work tirelessly to destroy the source of prosperity
Very neat! I am new to the book club series, how does commenting work? Should I hold off on discussing the first chapter / not spoil anything until the next post?
Yes please.
Very excited for this series. The commotions around Bavaria and Munich in the early 20th Century are very important for people to understand. Without this they are often left confused and ignorant on the context behind events that come later.
Yes and most helpful in understanding the potential rerun in America, by God 🇺🇸 we’ll do the whole Eastern Front both sides here! Niccolo the 🇺🇸 Elites WANT THIS so you can Pace on Elite theory.
Since they were name-checked at the beginning, just adding a few links on Mussolini & Franco that readers here will likely appreciate -- in the same spirit as this post:
Angelo Codevilla on Mussolini: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-original-fascist/
Stanley Payne on Franco: https://www.firstthings.com/author/stanley-g-payne
Charles Haywood on Franco: https://theworthyhouse.com/2019/04/16/on-francisco-franco/
Oxford University Press publishes an extensive series with the title "A Very Short Introduction to..." (fill in the blank) that has I believe about 100 titles now. Almost every title I have read is excellent. You would be a good candidate to author one with your love of history and ferreting out the details never addressed in common knowledge. Just in what you have written so far about Bavaria gives me a clue about why Hitler chose the state for his attempt at a coup.
In that light I also think of the joyous faces of the public that welcomed Hitler...one can appreciate the idea of stability and security at last bringing elation.
This book was an excellent choice. It’s a good read and worth the investment of time.
[Comment: Normie timeline is too generous for Anglo countries - it is basically a war on the western front, against the UK and eventually the USA. Normies dont know (5).]
urbanization, combined with increasing levels of literacy and economic inequality, laid --> urbanization (combined with increasing levels of literacy and economic inequality) laid
The first thing that struck me was the befuddled reaction of party politicians, who seemed constantly on their back foot during the early days. As the months went by, and events turned to parliamentary and bureaucratic infighting, they were more in their element and easily outmaneuvered Eisner. Eisner and the councils didn’t have a deep staff to take over the bureaucracy, and call it the Bavarian deep state if you wish, left in place it hamstrung the radicals. American right populists are in a similar position. If they ever take over the guvmit, they’d be up to their nose in swamp water in a couple months. There is no shadow government to step in.
Part of the problem for Eisner, of course, as the months went by, is that he and the councils did not have a deep reservoir of support, which would have sustained them.
Good observation.
"There is no shadow government to step in."
There could be. If the leadership of the "right populists" was intelligent, it could do its homework, be prepared, and recruit the personnel it needed. The Plum Book needs to be filled in every administration. Executive recruitment is a known set of skills. There is nothing theoretically difficult about it. It could be done. It would take a legislative effort, and leadership of the government departments to shake up and change the permanent workforce, but an administration that came in knowing what actually had to be done, especially with a congressional majority, could do it.
We don’t have a government in DC Sir. We had Bureaucratic Feudalism that reached consensus-examples Iraq War,
get rid of Trump, get rid of Nixon.
Had. Not have.
Now we have Franchisees with Badges and Departmental Status they bandy about- bluff. As Franchisees you’re on your own until you make money- money a huge part of DC, especially as they sense it’s ending.
They’re not going to run.
They already walked.
Don’t fret about Deep State.
It’s about as Deep as STASI or HVA HQ day after the Wall fell.
It’s just real slow motion.