I am a huge WWII buff and really find this era, especially the Nazi's very intriguing. My problem with this documentary, while it was decent,glazed over a few glaring facts, and it may have been done intentionally due to political reasons in Europe and the UK currently.
First, they kept referring to the Nazi party as a right-wing extremist party. Well, they ignored the fact that they were National "SOCIALISTS." In fact, in the early days Hitler gave speeches condemning capitalism, and openly saying that the ideals of the Nazi party was based on the ideas of Karl Marx and had very few differences from Marxism. They also touted themselves as a "workers party." The only mention of this in a slight way was the mention that right wing industrialists supported Hitler. They supported Hitler because they saw what happened when the Communists seized The Soviet Union, and felt that supporting Hitler would be a lot better than having everything (thier businesses and wealth) seized by Communism. Also mentioned is the large scale "Infrastructure" programs Hitler invested in such as the Autobahn...That is not the kind of thing Right Wingers do, in fact if you look at U.S. politics today you will see that this is the same thing Obama (a leftwing Idealist) is suggesting for the current bad economy.
Now, Yes, The Nazi's weren't exactly leftwing either but they had to do something to separate themselves from rivals such as the Communists and Social Democrats. Groups like that wanted to cure the ills of the Depression by class warfare, and the Nazi's instead focused their furry at the Jews (who were in perceived high income occupations), but essentially they replace the class warfare argument of the communists by replacing "the Wealthy, ruling class" with "jews" which earned them much more support and got the rich industrialists on his side. Not to mention attitude and prejudice against the jews was an accepted prejudice throughout the whole of Europe save for a very few countries like Poland. Nobody likes it today when you bring up the fact that many countries, including the U.S. turned away whole shiploads of Jewish refuges, who were later sent back to the slaughter when they were forced to return to Europe.
Ultimately the facts were fairly decent in this documentary, but, in my belief, there were a lot of omissions done in order to not ruffle any feathers in the UK and Europe due to the continue of barrages of left wing socialist opinions and politics currently enveloping the continent right now.
First, they kept referring to the Nazi party as a right-wing extremist party. Well, they ignored the fact that they were National "SOCIALISTS." In fact, in the early days Hitler gave speeches condemning capitalism, and openly saying that the ideals of the Nazi party was based on the ideas of Karl Marx and had very few differences from Marxism. They also touted themselves as a "workers party." The only mention of this in a slight way was the mention that right wing industrialists supported Hitler. They supported Hitler because they saw what happened when the Communists seized The Soviet Union, and felt that supporting Hitler would be a lot better than having everything (thier businesses and wealth) seized by Communism. Also mentioned is the large scale "Infrastructure" programs Hitler invested in such as the Autobahn...That is not the kind of thing Right Wingers do, in fact if you look at U.S. politics today you will see that this is the same thing Obama (a leftwing Idealist) is suggesting for the current bad economy.
Now, Yes, The Nazi's weren't exactly leftwing either but they had to do something to separate themselves from rivals such as the Communists and Social Democrats. Groups like that wanted to cure the ills of the Depression by class warfare, and the Nazi's instead focused their furry at the Jews (who were in perceived high income occupations), but essentially they replace the class warfare argument of the communists by replacing "the Wealthy, ruling class" with "jews" which earned them much more support and got the rich industrialists on his side. Not to mention attitude and prejudice against the jews was an accepted prejudice throughout the whole of Europe save for a very few countries like Poland. Nobody likes it today when you bring up the fact that many countries, including the U.S. turned away whole shiploads of Jewish refuges, who were later sent back to the slaughter when they were forced to return to Europe.
Ultimately the facts were fairly decent in this documentary, but, in my belief, there were a lot of omissions done in order to not ruffle any feathers in the UK and Europe due to the continue of barrages of left wing socialist opinions and politics currently enveloping the continent right now.