Selective Memory: Misunderstanding Nazis

I have been following the subject of Palestinian terrorism since the days of the German terrorist group RAF. Since October 7 I have been covering the Gaza war as a military blogger. Time and again, images flash across my monitor - primarily of Arabs - giving the Hitler salute at demonstrations or elsewhere in the Arab world.
For a long time, I have wanted to explain how this actually comes across from a German perspective. …not exactly educated or intelligent - I can give you that.

Humans tend to oversimplify in order to make the world comprehensible.

We view Athens as the cradle of democracy, yet forget that a good 80% of the population (women, slaves, foreigners, etc.) could not participate in that democracy at all. We see the French Revolution as a major turning point, while ignoring the fact that the revolutionaries subsequently began killing one another under a dictatorship. (Reign of Terror, La Terreur)
Europeans are held responsible for the transatlantic slave trade without considering that Great Britain banned the slave trade as early as 1807, and that a handful of traders (primarily Dutch and Portuguese) - with ship crews of just thirty men - could never have enslaved millions. It was Africans enslaving and selling one another, as well as Arabs who also enslaved Europeans. "Because their religion prescribed it that way." (Barbary Coast)
To this day, the arab term Abeed - which actually means “slave” - is used synonymously for Black people. In Gaza City, an entire neighborhood bears this name. Many Arab states did not abolish slavery until well after the Second World War. (Saudi Arabia: 1962; Oman: 1970; Mauritania: 1981 - criminalization only in 2007)

Ever heard of it? No?
Oversimplification.

It would therefore be advisable to listen to those who either study the matter closely or come from cultures where the prevailing perception often differs completely from the view held by outsiders. Especially at US universities.

When Black people, Arabs, Palestinians, and even Indians display Nazi insignia or the so-called Hitler salute today - or when Russian mercenaries like Dmitry Utkin get SS runes or swastikas tattooed on themselves - it generally elicits nothing but bewilderment in Germany.

As a former German Panzermann (tanker) and an intelligence petty officer and instructor, let me give you a brief lesson.

The foundation of the Nazi worldview was not simply hatred of Jews. People with disabilities, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals and political opponents were also gassed and killed through forced labor in the concentration camps.

At the core of this worldview was an absolute belief in the superiority of the Germanic race. Germanic, not German. The Germanic - the "Aryan" - race. Not the Arab, the Slavic, or any other.
At most, the Italians - descendants of the Roman Empire - and the Japanese, who held a similar worldview at the time, were accepted as equals. All others were viewed as inferior, as “Untermenschen” (subhumans), as lacking pure Aryan blood.

This ideology was so pivotal that the term "race" may no longer be used in reference to human beings in Germany today. That was the core of it - more so than the nationalism or the fact that they plunged half the world into war.

Nor were they socialists; they adopted the name to appeal to the labor movement. The English term "National Socialist" is actually misleading; in German "Nationalsozialismus" takes on a distinct meaning that has nothing to do with the political Left.
A unique feature of the German language is that we can not only combine words endlessly (just to scare people who are learning German) but also create new words with new meanings in the process. Google Kummerspeck, Fernweh or Schadenfreude, you will be fascinated.

This means that when Germans today see an image of an Arab, a leftist, or a Black person giving the Hitler salute, that is the first thought that crosses most people's minds.

And believe me: no other country in the world has confronted the darkness of its past the way we Germans have. When we do something, we do it right - uncompromisingly so.
It is taught in every school - across various subjects, and often in such detail that the students get annoyed by it. So, it is not just some German historians who will view such images with a smile, but most Germans.

Amin al-Husseini - the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and instigator of the Arab Revolt in the 1930s, during which massacres of Jews were already taking place - lived in Berlin for several years and was appointed an SS Gruppenführer (general). His mission was to raise Muslim units in the Balkans to hunt down Jews. He later fled and became a mentor to Yasser Arafat, the future founder of the PLO.
Yet these Muslim units were merely instruments - useful idiots.
This is quite apart from the fact that the Nazis fundamentally rejected all religions.

To become an SS officer before the Second World War, one had to be more than just a citizen of the German Reich. Candidates had to provide proof of ancestry dating back to 1750 (or even 1650 for high-ranking leaders) and meet specific athletic requirements. The SS placed great importance on physical appearance; long hair was frowned upon, as were tattoos. Candidates could not have a criminal record and had to demonstrate an excellent academic track record. An aristocratic name with a "von" was always an asset. Most had previously served in the army or the police. Marriages required SS approval; an SS officer was not permitted to marry a woman of an "impure race" so as to avoid fathering non-Aryan bastards.

Not a single one of those who raise their arms today in the Hitler salute would have met those criteria.
The name of the "Aryan Brotherhood" Gang in US prisons is a joke. All the more so given that the Nazis simply invented the term. Aryans are actually a socio-cultural group in India and Iran that has absolutely nothing to do with Europe or Germanic peoples.

What’s more, anyone who had performed the Hitler salute at demonstrations - which were likewise banned - would have vanished forever into a Gestapo cellar. (Geheime Staatspolizei, Nazi secret political police)

From the perspective of the Arabs, one really ought to ask oneself who they think would have taken over the British League of Nations mandate for Palestine had the Germans won - and what would have become of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians today.

The Germans killed millions of people and sent them to their deaths just to conquer Lebensraum (habitat) in the East. What might they have done had they known how much oil lay beneath Arabia?

No German who knows anything about history should have any doubt: the Arabs would have been next. And the black Untermenschen (subhumans) anyway.

"We shall continue to stir up unrest in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as masters and view these peoples, at best, as varnished half-apes who want to feel the whip."
Adolf Hitler, August 1939

Even though Germany - and every other European country - is far safer than the USA, for example, we still see right-wing extremist acts of violence in Germany to this day. And these also target people with dark hair. Common terms include "oil eyes," "black hair," or simply "Kanaken."

And even if one assumes that an Arab who admires the Nazis today knows most of this, one must then assume that he views Arabs as a Herrenrasse (master race) - just as the Nazis viewed the Germanic peoples.
But that also means he simply ignores what the real Nazis would have thought of him.

Many different factions within Islam and the Arab world are held together solely by their hatred of Jews. Otherwise, they would be at each other's throats - Sunnis against Shiites, secularists against Islamists. Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS are actually sworn enemies of one another. And - uneducated as they are - they treat the Nazis in exactly the same way; they have no idea that they would be lucky if a real Nazi merely spat on them.

The German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in his "The Calves March" in 1943:
„Hinter der Trommel her trotten die Kälber.
Das Fell für die Trommel liefern sie selber.“
"The calves trot along behind the drum.
They provide the skin for the drum themselves."

(A well-known saying today: „Die dümmsten Kälber wählen ihre Schlächter selber.“ "The dumbest calves choose their own butchers.")

Black people, Arabs, anyone with dark skin or hair, leftists - they ought to be shitting their pants in fear of the Nazis. Not giving the Hitler salute. That really just shows how uneducated and stupid these people are.