In the “West”, memories of how Nazism gained its economic vitality and its ascendancy have been memoryholed.
The idea of cultural censorship has applied. Mein Kampf is largely verbotten in free societies - Germany forbids its publication. Though copies of the book circulate (protected by the First Amendment), buying it often leads to consequences.
Discussion of how the Nazis thought, acted and felt during their rise has been sidelined for the cultural drama of the terrible effects. No real effort, scholarly or otherwise, will touch this topic for mass media.
There may be “They Thought They Would Be Free” and other works. But who is producing the movie version of that, the tract that shows most closely what the average German was thinking when they embraced the Faustian bargain of jobs for Nazism?
This may not even be intentional entirely, yet its effect is the same.
Movies portraying the period are either produced the same way China produces WW2 movies - to inspire patriotic fervour. Or they must portray the Nazis as cartoonish villains at worst, and nuanced in defeat at best.
My favorite movie on the topic is Downfall (Der Untergang), which authentically replicates Hitler’s last days. The actor playing him has a splitting resemblance to him and even speaks in the same Munich accent.
The movie has inspired a million memes of “Angry Hitler yelling”. The English trailer plays on the “Saving Private Ryan” trope of an enemy cornered at the gates.
Yet the German trailer is much darker, and speaks to the psyche of the most authentic cultural experience of what it was like to live with Nazism - albeit Nazism in defeat.
Goebbels’s wife murders his children through poisoning them. The trailer shows what happened to Berlin’s civilian population, who are subjected to starvation and death. The entire movie plays out much the same way.
Even then, however, this is Nazism in defeat. And not accessing the vital energy of what it must have been like in the early periods of Nazism has perhaps put a natural barrier for people who already saw the consequences of “remaking the world.” and bought some peace along with the rise of nuclear weapons for a generation or two.
But now that young people want to “remake the world” in turn, they are left to fill the gaps with the written word - which neither inspires nor fits quite as well in a world of video.
They are stuck with slogans and “never again” and the consequences of Nazism. But they are not equipped with the understanding of why Nazism was so easy to fall for.
“Never again would Spain elect a right-wing party”, until Spain did in the form of Vox.
“Never again would Germany be taken over by the nationalist right”, until the rise of the AFD.
I also believe this systematic blindness is why the “West” has consistently underrated Russia’s ability to operate as an autonomous war economy (largely responsible for Nazi Germany’s economic performance versus the Weimar Republic).
So it has real consequences for the thinking of cultural elites as well as the average person.
All this to say, even relatively free societies produce their own versions of kitsch, whether though extralegal cultural norms, or institutional thinking about what the “masses” should be exposed to.
And this kitsch sadly underprepares those who have never lived through the vital events that shaped the past, to recreate the past through their control of the future.
