1 in 5 is unprecedented. Like legit so. Even in the 1930s Americans did not have that much support for Hitler and his regime. Even the racists of the time found the Nazis to be too much (case in point: After WW2, when WW2 veterans were in the KKK, they would get into fights and disputes with younger non-WW2 generation Klansmen because of their Nazi sympathies). This is because while to modern American racists, the old-school Nazis believed in the same ‘whiteness’ as American racists did, they did not. The German Nazis heavily divided European people into their own sub-races. The French were treated better than the Poles and allowed some degree of autonomy (such as Vichy France) and would not be subject to the same genocide as East Europeans. This was because they put people like the French, Dutch, and Danes above them. But a German was still superior and would be afford more privileges than others Europeans.
The Americans were viewed as mongrels by the Nazis due to the melting-pot nature of the US. You had people from all over Europe (all over the world even back then, but just not as many as today due to racist immigration policies), and what counted as ‘white’ was highly subjective. For example if I (an ethic Lebanese person) were to go to Alabama in 1940, we would not need to ride in the back of the bus and we could drink from the whites only fountain and stay at a whites only accommodation. Arab-Americans were legally and even socially considered whites until the 1970s when the Iranian revolution and increasing anti-Arabism by Zionist media started to portray Arabs far more aggressively as savages bereft of all civilization.
I left this comment cooking for hours and I almost forgot about it, so I’ll stop here.
1 in 5 is unprecedented. Like legit so. Even in the 1930s Americans did not have that much support for Hitler and his regime. Even the racists of the time found the Nazis to be too much (case in point: After WW2, when WW2 veterans were in the KKK, they would get into fights and disputes with younger non-WW2 generation Klansmen because of their Nazi sympathies). This is because while to modern American racists, the old-school Nazis believed in the same ‘whiteness’ as American racists did, they did not. The German Nazis heavily divided European people into their own sub-races. The French were treated better than the Poles and allowed some degree of autonomy (such as Vichy France) and would not be subject to the same genocide as East Europeans. This was because they put people like the French, Dutch, and Danes above them. But a German was still superior and would be afford more privileges than others Europeans.
The Americans were viewed as mongrels by the Nazis due to the melting-pot nature of the US. You had people from all over Europe (all over the world even back then, but just not as many as today due to racist immigration policies), and what counted as ‘white’ was highly subjective. For example if I (an ethic Lebanese person) were to go to Alabama in 1940, we would not need to ride in the back of the bus and we could drink from the whites only fountain and stay at a whites only accommodation. Arab-Americans were legally and even socially considered whites until the 1970s when the Iranian revolution and increasing anti-Arabism by Zionist media started to portray Arabs far more aggressively as savages bereft of all civilization.
I left this comment cooking for hours and I almost forgot about it, so I’ll stop here.