Andrew KimmelVerified account

In 1930’s Germany, professors who were Jewish or supported left-leaning parties struggled to find research and teaching positions in public, government-supported German universities. The Nazis attempted to root out any dissent to their policies and ideology that remained.

Peter Drucker, an Austrian economist, was a lecturer at Frankfurt U in the 30s. He wrote the school was a target for the Nazis as it was the the most liberal of major German universities “that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience, and democracy.”

“Above all, Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist-physiologist of Nobel-Prize caliber and impeccable liberal credentials.”

As liberal professors were pushed out, German nationalist professors promoted the idea that foreign races had no legal status, that concentration camps were a legitimate exercise of power and that Jews were unproductive and no room could be found for them in any German setting.

“The rejection of reason was a thread running through centuries of German philosophy. This became particularly acute with the rise of the industrial age when reason was believed to be a mere critical instrument which hindered the creative and productive aspects of life...”

Now to the right wing talking point of “violent leftist mobs”, the indie & non-profit academic news outlet @ConversationUS writes, “Violent confrontations w/ antifascists gave the Nazis a chance to paint themselves as the victims of a pugnacious, lawless left. They seized it.”

“We know now that many Germans supported the fascists because they were terrified of leftist violence in the streets. Germans opened their morning newspapers and saw reports of clashes... It looked like a bloody tide of civil war was rising in their cities.”

“Voters and opposition politicians alike came to believe the government needed special police powers to stop violent leftists. Dictatorship grew attractive. The fact that the Nazis themselves were fomenting the violence didn’t seem to matter.”