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 British attitude to Nazism before WWII

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PaulRyckier
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PostSubject: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySat 18 Jun 2016, 22:19

On a French forum they are discussing the German-Soviet pact of 1939.
http://passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=39163
http://www.britannica.com/event/German-Soviet-Nonaggression-Pact

There I have contributed about the Franco-British negociations with the Soviet Union immediately before Stalin changed mind and agreed to the German-Soviet non-aggression pact.
My message from 31 May 2016 22h35 and my message from 2 June 21h01
In the last message I say among others:
"Le texte semble montrer que les Sovietiques n'avaient pas des intentions dès le début de laisser échouer les négociations tripartites de la Grande Bretagne, la France et l'Union Soviètique.
Et la Pologne semble être la cause directe de l'échec des négociations par son refus de laisser passer l'armée russe en cas d'agression?"
The text seems to show that the Soviets hadn't the intention from the start to let fail  the triparty negociations from Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union.
And Poland seems to have been the direct cause of the rebuff of the negociations by its refusal to let pass the Russian army in case of agression (by Germany for instance).

I met also in evidence that especially Britain seems not to have been prepared to negociate truly with the Soviet Union...otherwise why wouldn't they in these crucial hours haven't sent a plane instead of the slow boat, which needed five full days to reach its destiny...the same for the French, who sent even a subaltern and when they asked for his plenipontenciary negociation acquirements he had to admit that he had none...
One French commentator said about Poland that it was not in a position to much choose. France and Britain had to say that they could not garantee the defense of Poland in case of agression by Germany if they didn't accept the entering of Russian troops in case of agression by Germany and by that had to agree with a coalition of the three big ones, Britain, France and Russia....


And now I come to my question, which was sparked by one of the French contributors:
Message from 11 June by Caesar Scipio.
Among others:
"La majorité de l'establishment conservateur était favorable à une entente avec l'Allemagne nazie, à la politique d'apaisement dans le sens que nous avons mentionné. Simplement cette majorité de l'establishment conservateur avait besoin de ne pas s'emplafonner trop frontalement avec une opinion publique fermement opposée à l'expansionnisme allemand dès le début de 1939."
The majority of the Conservatory establishment was favourable to an entente with the German Nazis, to a politic of apeasement in the sense that we have already mentioned. Solely that that majority of this Conservatory establishment needed to not be stubborn too much frontal to a public opinion, which was vehemently opposed to the German expansionism from the beginning of 1939.

First of all and that is now my question to you:
I had the expression that even in Britain there was also in between the wars a significant minority, who was also for negociations, a bon entente with the Germans, for a lot of people the real ennemy were the Bolshevics, the Soviet Union, the Communists?

I mentioned it already overhere, in Belgium from my family's rememberence that was certainly the case...at least in the Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders...while my family hadn't direct contact with the other provinces and had to rely on what the "biased" papers said...
I have to say from what I read on the French messageboard it was even there worser than in Belgium...

Now my question about this interwar period:
Do you have rememberance from your parents, grandparents what the mood was in Britain in the interwar period?
Gil, Priscilla, LIR, Temperance, Ferval, Vizzer, Triceratops, Normanhurst, Madnan, AngloNorman?

I am also interested in the rememberance of Dirk Marinus, who lived in The Netherlands in that time...
After all they had as in the North of Belgium the VNV one of the highest procents Nazi parties with the NSB during the war...?

I know these few testimonies have perhaps not real historic worth but at least they are a start of a study... Wink ...

Kind regards, Paul.
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PaulRyckier
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySat 18 Jun 2016, 22:21

OOPS and I forgot Meles meles Embarassed
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySat 18 Jun 2016, 23:22

From what I can recall of family chat Paul, in the early thirties all the young bloods in our small town joined the 'Brown Shirts.' It was almost what one did after leaving the scouts. All that marching and the uniforms had appeal. At small town level it was not political.......no more than my father - and later my mother and her sister also, dressing up in Russian Regional/Cossack costumes plus Borzoi for several local carnivals. I think for them dressing up and being part of the scene and having  fun was in vogue for a short while  that quickly faded when the politics of the time became clearer.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySun 19 Jun 2016, 21:50

Thank you very much Priscilla for that testimony.

Kind regards from your friend Paul.
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Temperance
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyMon 20 Jun 2016, 11:58

My father, in his youth, was a supporter of Oswald Mosley, Paul. He was at Cambridge during the era when one was either a Fascist or a Communist. The upper middle-class, public-school intellectuals (the Cambridge spies brigade) were all Communists and my poor father - who was literally penniless as well as emotionally impoverished - being a very clever, working-class, grammar-school boy decided that the wise choice was to become a right-wing fanatic. He was not alone. But he hated Hitler and perhaps bitterly regretted his former youthful allegiance to a cunningly ambitious man who fancied himself as the English Fuhrer. Mosley was a charismatic figure who deceived many passionate and misguided young men. My father was not alone. (EDIT: He was not alone. Why did I repeat that? What would Freud make of my repetition, I wonder? A need to excuse madness in one's family of origin, somehow?)

My father died before I had a chance to understand a lot of things. I wish I could have discussed all this with him, but I never could. I tried, but I was always squashed - but perhaps the squashing helped me become the person I am. I understand and have great sympathy with and for squashees - or at least I think I do. Maybe that was my "life's lesson" - but that is probably a fanciful idea. We have to make sense of things somehow.


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Meles meles
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyMon 20 Jun 2016, 13:47

My father, born in 1922, was a bit younger and so by his teens it was already fairly clear where Hitler's Germany was heading. He was also neither an academic not an intellectual - although very bright, and like his parents, very well read. He left school (an ordinary boys secondary school) at 14 and went to work in his dad's business, then in 1938 he got a government-sponsored engineering apprenticeship in the Tyneside shipyards (part of the rearmament drive). He subsequently became a Leading Aircraftman in the RAF.

He never used to speak much about his youth but I did in later years manage to winkle a few things out of him. In particular he felt that Britain should never have given any support to Franco in the Spanish Civil War but rather should have intervened on the Republican side. He felt that this refusal to aid the elected Spanish government acted like Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in that it served to embolden Nazi Germany, and that maybe a strong British intervention there could have nipped fascism in the bud. He had absolutely no time for Mosely who he considered an upper-class, establishment thug, with an eye solely for his own advancement and with no interest in supporting the ordinary working man. In his opinion this was also the over-whelming viewpoint amongst all workers in the Tyneside shipyards, mines and industries at the time. He opinioned that British workers had seen the events in Spain simply in terms of a struggle between the establishment and the workers, with obvious echos to the often poor industrial relations in Britain, and tended to equate Mosely and his mob with the powerful mine and shipyard owners, who always put profits before workers' wages, health or safety. 

In subsequent years Dad was politically conservative, even tending to the far right ... he had the greatest respect and admiration for Churchill, thought Enoch Powell was spot on, and thoroughly supported Mrs Thatcher ... but I suspect in the 1930s his youthful politics were more balanced and probably to a large degree influenced by the views of his father. As a family they were comfortably upper working class ... his father was a skilled tradesman with his own painting and decorating business, and I know his politics were largely socialist. He had been at the upper age limit for conscription in WW1 and had never been called up. Instead he'd worked in the Tyneside shipyards, principally at Palmers in Jarrow. When Palmers shipyard closed in 1932, and nearly every man in the town was made unemployed overnight, grand-dad turned out to support the workers on their march to Parliament, the Jarrow Crusade, and was involved in charities providing relief. He was a great fan of Ellen Wilkinson, the local Labour MP, but though he hated the fascists again I rather think he saw Mosely and his blackshirts as a largely southern, London-based movement, and not of much direct relevance to the North-East.
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Temperance
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyMon 20 Jun 2016, 17:07

MM wrote:
He never used to speak much about his youth but I did in later years manage to winkle a few things out of him. In particular he felt that Britain should never have given any support to Franco in the Spanish Civil War but rather should have intervened on the Republican side. He felt that this refusal to aid the elected Spanish government acted like Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in that it served to embolden Nazi Germany, and that maybe a strong British intervention there could have nipped fascism in the bud. He had absolutely no time for Mosely who he considered an upper-class, establishment thug, with an eye solely for his own advancement and with no interest in supporting the ordinary working man. In his opinion this was also the over-whelming viewpoint amongst all workers in the Tyneside shipyards, mines and industries at the time. He opinioned that British workers had seen the events in Spain simply in terms of a struggle between the establishment and the workers, with obvious echos to the often poor industrial relations in Britain, and tended to equate Mosely and his mob with the powerful mine and shipyard owners, who always put profits before workers' wages, health or safety.



Which to me seems the sane response. How my father, a man who was undoubtedly so clever, so educated (his degree was in History, too!), and who had seen within his own family the terrible poverty that was everywhere in Liverpool during the 20s and 30s - how such a man could get it all so wrong always baffled me. Yet the clue may be in your comment: "As a family they were comfortably upper working class ... his father was a skilled tradesman with his own painting and decorating business, and I know his politics were largely socialist." My father's family was very uncomfortably lower working-class. My grandfather, a feckless Irishman (sorry, nordmann, but he was) drank too much, was hopeless with money and drove my grandmother to distraction. She couldn't cope at all, and I think my father, like many children from chaotic alcoholic homes, grew up angry, bitter and full of contempt for his own people. He admired the "toffs" and wanted to be one. They fooled him completely. Being one of Mosley's lot could make a young man - who was essentially riddled with insecurities and low self-esteem - feel powerful.

Odd you mention your father's admiration for a female politician. My father loathed the idea of women in power: he particularly hated Barbara Castle, I think because she introduced seat-belts in cars and apparently she only had a third-class degree (even though it was awarded by the University of Oxford)!!

He died before Thatcher became Prime Minister, but he probably would have - grudgingly - have accepted her, despite the fact that she only had a second-class degree.

He once, learning of my academic ambitions, shouted at me: "When are you going to understand that you are no intellectual?"  That remark has haunted me all my life.

But, as Oscar Wilde said: “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”  I have forgiven him, poor old right-wing idiot of an "intellectual" that he was.

Philip Larkin had it right, I think, in This Be The Verse:


They f*ck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f*cked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.



Have strayed a little off-topic, but I hope Paul will forgive me.
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nordmann
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyTue 21 Jun 2016, 09:50

I think that which typified the most prevalent contemporary British attitude towards fascism in the 1920s and 30s is to be found in the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories involving Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, and his Black Shorts movement.
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Temperance
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyTue 21 Jun 2016, 10:42

I've just watched this - I wish I hadn't. I actually feel sick. It's all very well laughing at Spode, but this man was seriously terrifying. Frost handled him very well.



Mind you, his wife was worse.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyTue 21 Jun 2016, 12:32

Temp wrote:
It's all very well laughing at Spode, but this man was seriously terrifying.

I agree. The British tendency not to take the ludicrous seriously (a trait I admire - it's a much more difficult trick to pull off than it appears) meant that a lot of people didn't realise the actual threat presented by real-life Spodes until it was almost too late.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyWed 22 Jun 2016, 22:21

Thank you all for the interesting replies. I have a lot to answer as to the other subfora overhere. A bit patience please, while so busy last days, as prepairing research to answer these messages...
Just to start some links about P.G. Wodehouse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Code_of_the_Woosters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Spode
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3580497/The-price-Wodehouse-paid-for-creating-Jeeves-and-Wooster.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse



Kind regards, Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyThu 23 Jun 2016, 22:23

Temperance wrote:
I've just watched this - I wish I hadn't. I actually feel sick. It's all very well laughing at Spode, but this man was seriously terrifying. Frost handled him very well.



Mind you, his wife was worse.


Temperance,

I watched the day before yesterday the 38 minutes Frost interview. It remembered me of an interview in Spain from our REX leader Léon Degrelle. I wanted to explain to you the Belgian interwar rightist movements with the Rex movement and the Flemish VNV. As it is a complex history I need more time to prepare and explain such a difficult material.
Thank you anyway however for this Mosley interview from 1967. It is revealing piece of history that I want to comment further tomorrow...

Evening from your friend Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyFri 24 Jun 2016, 15:08

Paul,

 you were asking about the attitude of the British towards Nazism before WW2 and then in the same post ask what the situation was in the Netherlands.

Well , in the Netherlands, and especially in the upper class, it was the same as in Britain.

They had many connections with the German upper class either by marriage , student time in Germany and spending holidays in Germany and like wise the German upper class  in turn studied in the Netherlands and Britain and enjoyed their holidays.

As a result friendships were knitted and carried on even when Nazism developed in Germany. It is well known that even when war was declared many in the Netherlands and in other European countries ,Britain included, still favoured Nazism.

Of course as war went on all that waned away but Paul, believe me when I say that if Britain had been invaded by Germany the Nazis would have been welcomed with open arms by many of the British upper class.

And this happened in the Netherlands and yet later in the war it were these same upper class who turned their back on Germany and invested their wealth in financing the resistance and their underground movements.
Of course the finance was paid back to them after the war but .......yes you guessed right no prosecution and criminal action was taken against them about their stance earlier in the war.
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Meles meles
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyFri 24 Jun 2016, 15:32

Dirk Marinus wrote:

Of course as war went on all that waned away but Paul, believe me when I say that if Britain had been invaded by Germany the Nazis would have been welcomed with open arms by many of the British upper class.

Well quite, here's the Duke and Duchess of Windsor on a pre-war visit to Germany:

British attitude to Nazism before WWII Edward-viii-was-the-queens-uncle-really-a-nazi-sympathiser-136399325392103901-150718214026_zpsagpmzy4u
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyFri 24 Jun 2016, 15:37

British attitude to Nazism before WWII Sun-queen-nazi-salute
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyFri 24 Jun 2016, 22:11

PaulRyckier wrote:
Temperance wrote:
I've just watched this - I wish I hadn't. I actually feel sick. It's all very well laughing at Spode, but this man was seriously terrifying. Frost handled him very well.



Mind you, his wife was worse.


Temperance,

I watched the day before yesterday the 38 minutes Frost interview. It remembered me of an interview in Spain from our REX leader Léon Degrelle. I wanted to explain to you the Belgian interwar rightist movements with the Rex movement and the Flemish VNV. As it is a complex history I need more time to prepare and explain such a difficult material.
Thank you anyway however for this Mosley interview from 1967. It is revealing piece of history that I want to comment further tomorrow...

Evening from your friend Paul.

 Temperance,

the whole evening looked to the Brexit and then the rest to "Opera siempre" Embarassed ...
http://www.operasiempre.es/

and to "spotify" for instance to this:



Kind regards from your always distracted friend Paul.
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PaulRyckier
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySat 25 Jun 2016, 22:26

nordmann wrote:
I think that which typified the most prevalent contemporary British attitude towards fascism in the 1920s and 30s is to be found in the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories involving Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, and his Black Shorts movement.
I wasn't aware of all this till you started this post, Nordmann.
And indeed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Code_of_the_Woosters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Spode

 I wasn't aware too that my favourite P.G. Wodehouse was a contemporary from the interwar period...I thought he was much younger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse
I found also this hilarious article about the Sir only attributed the last year before his death...
A bit a parallelof Hergé in Belgiium condemned for his contacts with Degrelle...they were notabene on the same redaction of a paper La Petite... And Hergé was desilussioned to the core and tooke it with him the rest of his life...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3580497/The-price-Wodehouse-paid-for-creating-Jeeves-and-Wooster.html

We now learn, however, that the Establishment had another reason for denying Wodehouse an honour. It was a reason so preposterous, so fantastically silly, that it would take the comic genius of the Master himself - the "head of our profession", as Hilaire Belloc called Wodehouse - to do full justice to its absurdity.
Papers released yesterday by the Public Record Office show that Wodehouse was recommended for appointment as a Companion of Honour in 1967. The proposal was rejected, it now emerges, after it had been put to Sir Patrick Dean, who was then the British ambassador in Washington.
Sir Patrick was strongly against it, not only on the grounds that it would revive the controversy about Wodehouse's broadcasts during the war, but for this reason: "It would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate."
It is hard to know where to begin to explain what a crass judgment that was. For one thing, it reminds us that there is nothing new about Tony Blair's obsession with Britain's "image" abroad.

Kind regards, Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySun 26 Jun 2016, 22:09

PaulRyckier wrote:


Temperance,

I watched the day before yesterday the 38 minutes Frost interview. It remembered me of an interview in Spain from our REX leader Léon Degrelle. I wanted to explain to you the Belgian interwar rightist movements with the Rex movement and the Flemish VNV. As it is a complex history I need more time to prepare and explain such a difficult material.
Thank you anyway however for this Mosley interview from 1967. It is revealing piece of history that I want to comment further tomorrow...

Evening from your friend Paul.

Temperance,

there were two lager extreme right movements in Belgium in the interwar period.

First the Rexists with Léon Degrelle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle


Degrelle started rather from a Roman-Catholic context with his Christos Rex tendencies and was as the equivalent Flemish party Verdinaso for a kind of rebirth of the Burgundian entity...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdinaso
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Burgundy
Although the Verdinaso born from anti-French elite resentiment during WWI, was never a big party and didn't even participate in elections or it was in a coalition with someone...
And all this Flemish and Walloon talks of a "Greater Netherlands" wasn't backed that much by the Dutch from The Netherlands. Only a few as a Wies Moens or in The Netherlands a wellknow historian, I can't recall his name for the moment (and for fear to losse my message when I seek it on Google...) I read a thousand page autobiography from him, were his sympathies for the Greater Netherlands was expressed...but when it all turned after 1933 to parallels with Nazi party in Germany he abstained, even to turn to resistance after the occupation of The Netherlands...
As many members from the VNV and from Verdinaso...and even Rexists...how complex was all that stuff to see "the clear line"...

And the Flemish parties (Degrelle had most support in Wallonia and as such wasn't that strong German minded) had as Dirk Marinus mentioned in the Netherlands, even from before WWI strong links with the German elite and language culture...links from the Flemish culture elite, not the Frencisized Flemish elite who was focused on Paris...again some particularity of the Flemish ultraright movement who was born from the "language difficulties", which were exacerbated by the collaboration of the Flemish Dutch speaking elite during WWI pushed by the Germans as the making Dutch speaking of the University of Ghent during WWII...

But all this rightisty parties had one common denominator: their abhorrence of the Bolsheviks (where they were joined by the Catholic Church, with the recent atrocities against the Russian elite and the Russian nobility). They were also all for a rigid guided state, a bit with the Italian Mussolini state as guide and an abhorrence of the babbles in the corrupted parliament, which leed to nothing but inaction...one of the favourite picture of Degrelle was a broom sweeking al that parliamentary rubbish from the floor...
But they all get later in the turbulent waters of the Nazi party...get even subsidised from Germany before WWII...and gradualy joined the anti-Jewish stance of the Nazis...
And yes, there were many defections of members, who joined during WWII the resistance...on,ly to say of complex it all was...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Nationaal_Verbond
And to show how the Nazis even such ideas of a Greater Netherlands and a reborn Burgundy deformed the following example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_State_of_Burgundy
Perhaps a word also about King Leopold III, who was as the rigthist parties also for a strong rule, if possible without parliament, but I have to say, after and in depth study, that he never, in my opinion, has worked outside his Belgian constitutional rights. the opponents and royalists in the Belgian King's Question can say what they want...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_III_of_Belgium

Kind regards from your friend Paul.
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Temperance
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyMon 27 Jun 2016, 12:28

Thank you, Paul. This topic has lost out rather to the Europhant thread! I shall read your links with interest when we all become bored with the Brexit debacle...
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyTue 28 Jun 2016, 22:17

Dirk Marinus wrote:
Paul,

 you were asking about the attitude of the British towards Nazism before WW2 and then in the same post ask what the situation was in the Netherlands.

Well , in the Netherlands, and especially in the upper class, it was the same as in Britain.

They had many connections with the German upper class either by marriage , student time in Germany and spending holidays in Germany and like wise the German upper class  in turn studied in the Netherlands and Britain and enjoyed their holidays.

As a result friendships were knitted and carried on even when Nazism developed in Germany. It is well known that even when war was declared many in the Netherlands and in other European countries ,Britain included, still favoured Nazism.

Of course as war went on all that waned away but Paul, believe me when I say that if Britain had been invaded by Germany the Nazis would have been welcomed with open arms by many of the British upper class.

And this happened in the Netherlands and yet later in the war it were these same upper class who turned their back on Germany and invested their wealth in financing the resistance and their underground movements.
Of course the finance was paid back to them after the war but .......yes you guessed right no prosecution and criminal action was taken against them about their stance earlier in the war.


Dirk,

thank you so much for your explanation.

I will tomorrow add the rest of my reply, while it seems accordiang to my wife bedtime now...
But perhaps first some additional information about Pieter Geyl and his Greater Netherlands affiliation...I mentioned it to Temperance...I read his autobiography...a thousand pages,where his links with the interwar VNV were described...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Geyl
http://www.wt.be/index.php/wt/article/view/6809
https://www.bol.com/nl/p/ik-die-zo-weinig-in-mijn-verleden-leef/1001004006442052/
http://wt.be/index.php/wt/article/viewFile/6809/1233


Kind regards from your friend Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyWed 29 Jun 2016, 20:32

Dirk Marinus wrote:
Paul,

 you were asking about the attitude of the British towards Nazism before WW2 and then in the same post ask what the situation was in the Netherlands.

Well , in the Netherlands, and especially in the upper class, it was the same as in Britain.

They had many connections with the German upper class either by marriage , student time in Germany and spending holidays in Germany and like wise the German upper class  in turn studied in the Netherlands and Britain and enjoyed their holidays.

As a result friendships were knitted and carried on even when Nazism developed in Germany. It is well known that even when war was declared many in the Netherlands and in other European countries ,Britain included, still favoured Nazism.

Of course as war went on all that waned away but Paul, believe me when I say that if Britain had been invaded by Germany the Nazis would have been welcomed with open arms by many of the British upper class.

And this happened in the Netherlands and yet later in the war it were these same upper class who turned their back on Germany and invested their wealth in financing the resistance and their underground movements.
Of course the finance was paid back to them after the war but .......yes you guessed right no prosecution and criminal action was taken against them about their stance earlier in the war.

 Dirk,

I appreciate very much your message about the Dutch upper class. It is a bit the image of the Flemish movement intellectuals and writers from before WWI and the interbellum in Belgium. There was also together with the French speaking part of Belgium a strong anti-Bolshevism feeded by the recent atrocities of the Russian Revolution. And yes the Catholic Church a Belgian stronghold was also fiercely against this regime which had abolished religion and ecclesiastic establishments. And yes among the Flemish artists and writers there were also many who flirted with the Italian Mussolini Fascism...

But what I wanted to ask you more, was about the general attitude of the common people, which was in Belgium strongly anti-Communist apart of some communist leaning Socialists. Most Socialist were in my opinion more involved in the parliamentary work and belonged nearly to the establishment Wink ...
About the Fascist leanings in the Netherlands I found as ever in first line on wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Movement_in_the_Netherlands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Mussert

From an anti-fascist source Wink :
https://libcom.org/history/history-dutch-fascism-militant-anti-fascist-response


Kind regards from your friend Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyThu 30 Jun 2016, 22:09

nordmann wrote:
Temp wrote:
It's all very well laughing at Spode, but this man was seriously terrifying.

I agree. The British tendency not to take the ludicrous seriously (a trait I admire - it's a much more difficult trick to pull off than it appears) meant that a lot of people didn't realise the actual threat presented by real-life Spodes until it was almost too late.


Nordmann,

I wanted already immediately to reply to this, but with all my far-right interwar research I forgot.

"I agree. The British tendency not to take the ludicrous seriously (a trait I admire - it's a much more difficult trick to pull off than it appears) meant that a lot of people didn't realise the actual threat presented by real-life Spodes until it was almost too late."

I admire it too. And in my humble opinion it is a trait that acts as a welcome anti-dose to all that pompous presented as right attitudes to in fact erronous approaches. And in my studies of the Fascist movements in Europe during the interwar period, there was a clear difference between Britain and the continent. Even in the ultra-left movements.
In my opinion "The Great Dictator" from Charlie Chaplin was a lot more effectif in the US than all the serious rejections of Nazi Germany...and of course Chaplin was also a Brit...
To show you the difference I present a less known Fascist movement to show all the symbolic stuff from the continent:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iron-Guard


Kind regards, Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyThu 30 Jun 2016, 22:14

nordmann wrote:
Temp wrote:
It's all very well laughing at Spode, but this man was seriously terrifying.

I agree. The British tendency not to take the ludicrous seriously (a trait I admire - it's a much more difficult trick to pull off than it appears) meant that a lot of people didn't realise the actual threat presented by real-life Spodes until it was almost too late.


Nordmann,

I wanted already immediately to reply to this, but with all my far-right interwar research I forgot.

"I agree. The British tendency not to take the ludicrous seriously (a trait I admire - it's a much more difficult trick to pull off than it appears) meant that a lot of people didn't realise the actual threat presented by real-life Spodes until it was almost too late."

I admire it too. And in my humble opinion it is a trait that acts as a welcome anti-dose to all that pompous presented as right attitudes to in fact erronous approaches. And in my studies of the Fascist movements in Europe during the interwar period, there was a clear difference between Britain and the continent. Even in the ultra-left movements.
In my opinion "The Great Dictator" from Charlie Chaplin was a lot more effectif in the US than all the serious rejections of Nazi Germany...and of course Chaplin was also a Brit...
To show you the difference I present a less known Fascist movement to show all the symbolic stuff from the continent:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iron-Guard


Kind regards, Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyThu 30 Jun 2016, 22:32

Excuses for the duplo? Don't know how it happened.
Nordmann, if you...
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptySat 02 Jul 2016, 19:11

Temperance,


I mentioned the Iron Guard from Romania to Nordmann.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard

And as Mosley in 1968 I think  it is everywhere still there...as in Romania:
From the wiki:
"Legacy[edit]
The name "Garda de Fier" is also used by a small, Romanian nationalist group, active in the post-communist era.
There are also another contemporary far-right organizations in Romania, such as Pentru Patrie (For the Fatherland) and Noua Dreaptă (The New Right). Considering themselves the heir apparent to the Iron Guard, Noua Dreaptă embraces legionnairism and has a personality cult for Corneliu Codreanu but they also use the celtic cross, which is not associated with legionnairism.
Since the 1970s Mircea Eliade, a prominent historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher who was a professor at the University of Chicago, has been criticized for having supported the Iron Guard in the 1930s."

I many times wonder if today in the right circumstances it all can flare up again stirred up by some populists and intellectuals, who, or believe in their own drivel, or use the drivel deliberately in full conscience to reach some level of might...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.
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PostSubject: Re: British attitude to Nazism before WWII   British attitude to Nazism before WWII EmptyMon 04 Jul 2016, 21:51

Adding to my former message...
"I many times wonder if today in the right circumstances it all can flare up again stirred up by some populists and intellectuals, who, or believe in their own drivel, or use the drivel deliberately in full conscience to reach some level of might..."

Today in the Bangladesh murders:
Police mentioned that the terrorists came from well educated circles...
Yes, it seems that also intellectuals are not free to be turned into or brainwashed towards some abject deeds...? Even with all their intellectual power...?

Kind regards, Paul.
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