Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
Nov 3, 2025 - 2:25pm
This link will take you to someone who's collecting all the times that the Speaker of the House of Representatives said that he was unaware of something that he should be aware of.
Warning: there are twenty-seven clips.
You could jump to the conclusion that he's too busy to know all this stuff, but the Occam's razor answer is that he's simply lying to us, like trump does, when confronted with something that he doesn't want to acknowledge. This is not a transparent government; it's a cadre of liars.
What's not obvious is that it was a relatively small section of the population that were actual party members. There were others who might have approved as well but weren't 'card-carrying members':
The general membership of the Nazi Party mainly consisted of the urban and rural lower middle classes. 7% belonged to the upper class, another 7% were peasants, 35% were industrial workers and 51% were what can be described as middle class. In early 1933, just before Hitler's appointment to the chancellorship, the party showed an under-representation of "workers", who made up 30% of the membership but 46% of German society. Conversely, white-collar employees (19% of members and 12% of Germans), the self-employed (20% of members and 10% of Germans) and civil servants (15% of members and 5% of the German population) had joined in proportions greater than their share of the general population.<144> These members were affiliated with local branches of the party, of which there were 1,378 throughout the country in 1928. In 1932, the number had risen to 11,845, reflecting the party's growth in this period.<144>
When it came to power in 1933, the Nazi Party had over 2 million members. In 1939, the membership total rose to 5.3 million with 81% being male and 19% being female. It continued to attract many more and by 1945 the party reached its peak of 8 million with 63% being male and 37% being female (about 10% of the German population of 80 million).<4><145>
Nazi members with military ambitions were encouraged to join the Waffen-SS, but a great number enlisted in the Wehrmacht and even more were drafted for service after World War II began. Early regulations required that all Wehrmacht members be non-political and any Nazi member joining in the 1930s was required to resign from the Nazi Party.
However, this regulation was soon waived and full Nazi Party members served in the Wehrmacht in particular after the outbreak of World War II. The Wehrmacht Reserves also saw a high number of senior Nazis enlisting, with Reinhard Heydrich and Fritz Todt joining the Luftwaffe, as well as Karl Hanke who served in the army.
The British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that junior officers in the army were inclined to be especially zealous National Socialists with a third of them having joined the Nazi Party by 1941. Reinforcing the work of the junior leaders were the National Socialist Leadership Guidance Officers, which were created with the purpose of indoctrinating the troops for the "war of extermination" against Soviet Russia.<146> Among higher-ranking officers, 29% were NSDAP members by 1941.<147>
If I were to find myself at a protest and I was on the side of the fence with people waving a swastika, I would jump that fence and find a new spot ASAP.
Again, I know there are those that say we should use the word Nazi, because it cheapens the impact of the word. But to those people, I ask: what should we call these people?
Again, I know there are those that say we should use the word Nazi, because it cheapens the impact of the word. But to those people, I ask: what should we call these people?