Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

I get what the author is getting at. Not sure I agree. Many years ago, I read "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland", which analyzes interviews with the actual men performing the slaughter of innocents at the end of the war. The conclusion that book drew was different than this article, and makes more sense to me — that it's not "mean people 'go nazi'", but ordinary people who 'go nazi', given a system…

Written by Dorothy Thompson, first journalist kicked out of Nazi Germany. She also said: "No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor…

> contempt mingled with envy (paraphrase) I reckon that's a good tell, even today.

> Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis…