Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "Comparing the ideologies of Hitler, Mussolini and Mosley" video.

  1. I think the idea that Hitler was a nationalist was always a deliberate misunderstanding arising from the name of his party, which was simply a national party rather than an international movement like communism, which it opposed. After the defeat of Nazism in the war, other left wing parties throughout Europe, from the various communist parties on the continent to the Labour Party in Britain from which Oswald Mosley had split to form the BUF, sought to distance themselves from Hitler's National Socialists by re-branding them as extreme 'right-wing' nationalists. The whole idea that nationalism is inherently a right wing characteristic is obviously nonsense, since Britain has to contend with two very left wing nationalist parties in the form of Sinn Fein in Ireland and the Scottish Nationalist Party in Scotland.
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  2. I don't see Britain as "Russophobic". Historically, Britain has not been afraid of anyone, and has defeated everyone seeking to cause trouble for itself and her allies. Britain objects to what Russia is doing in Ukraine because it violates the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukrainian independence in return for giving up its inherited Soviet era nuclear weapons, an agreement to which Britain is a signatory along with the United States and... Ruzzia! The definition of Zionism, according to my search online - is the movement to form an independent Jewish state in the Middle East within the historical boundaries of Israel. I don't think that meets any definition of fascism. It's totally unrelated. I think you have a Monty Pythonesque view of fascism, where everyone you disagree with is labelled a "fascist", as if that makes them automatically wrong. That scene in Monty Python And The Holy Grail ("witness the violence inherent in the system! Help - I'm being oppressed!") was mocking the idiots who try this nonsense, who rather insultingly think that everyone else is even more stupid than they are and will somehow just swallow their nonsense. It doesn't always work! Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are elected as MPs by their parliamentary constituents and were elected as leader of the Conservative Party by it's MPs and wider membership, so they were both elected by two constituencies. The office of Prime Minister is an appointed one, not elected, and the convention is that the appointee is the leader of the party that can form a government in the elected House of Commons. People in Britain who think they elect the Prime Minister, or should, do not understand the British system, and for that I blame the British media, because of their envy of the American media feeding frenzy with leadership TV debates etc., during American presidential elections. Britain does not have a presidential system (despite Tony Blair thinking he was) and it should not be thought as such. Voters should vote for their preferred candidate in their parliamentary constituency and not have a millennial meltdown when the party of government changes their leader mid-term. If they want to influence that change, then they should join the party. Democracy does work, but only if the people particpate.
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  3. Just to clarify the Arnhem reference at 18:49, the Reich Arbeits Dienst (State Labour Service) or RAD, was a paramilitary organisation designed to solve the mass unemployment problem before the war and got young people digging ditches and other public works. It was used as a precursor to full military service. Originally trained to drill with spades, they became armed with rifles during the war years and many RAD units were attached to the expanded Luftwaffe Flak branch of service to man Flak guns. The RAD were organised into Gruppen, which were battalion sized units, and the Gruppe would contain a number of Abteilung which were company (or in Flak service - Battery) sized units. The word 'Abteilung' is uniquely German with no English equivalent, meaning department or division of a larger formation - it contains the word 'teil', which anyone with a German car will know means 'part' in English. In the army or Lufwaffe they are usually battalion-sized sub units of regiments or divisions, but in the RAD they are the sub-units of a RAD Gruppe. A number of RAD units were involved in the battle of Arnhem, being as they were making up a large number of Flak crews in the area, but there were also some RAD troops used as infantry, such as Kampfgruppe Petersen - a RAD Flak zug (platoon) from a heavy battery based in Antwerp that happened to be waiting for a train to Germany at Arnhem station on 17 September, when the airborne operation began. I believe they were the 2.Zug of RAD 3./271 which had been 1./gemishte Flak-Abteilung 295 (2nd platoon, 3rd Abteilung, of RAD Gruppe 271, serving as 1st battery of mixed Flak battalion 295). When troops from II.SS-Panzerkorps started arriving in Arnhem to counter-attack the British Airborne at the Arnhem bridge, Emil Petersen's RAD platoon was incorporated into an SS unit, given weapons ("ancient carbines. To break open mine, I had to bang it against a table") and sent to fight at the bridge. I'm not sure that they were directly attached to Kampfgruppe Möller, which was a much reduced SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 9 (the engineer battalion of 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'), but it was one of the first respondents to Arnhem arriving from Brummen on the first evening, so it's possible, but I don't know where TIK got that information. According to Cornelius Ryan (A Bridge Too Far, 1974) Petersen's men were taken to an SS-barracks to be issued weapons, possibly the Saksen-Weimar kazerne, which was the base for SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 consisting of a couple of 'alarm' companies acting as infantry under the name Kampfgruppe Harder - I think that's the more likely SS unit involved. There were other RAD units fighting at Arnhem - the other RAD unit given awards, including the armband 'Arnheim' for fighting as infantry, was RAD Abteilung 4./310 located in the area of Bemmel just north of Nijmegen, and had previously been serving as another Flak battery in Antwerp - 4./gem.Flak-Abt.295. A number of RAD troops in the area were later officially incorporated into the SS in order to refresh their ranks. Both the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were raised in France in 1943 from an officer cadre of the older SS divisions and RAD troops from eastern Europe - mostly Romania and Hungary, so recruiting from the RAD was not unusual at this stage of the war.
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  4.  @werrkowalski2985  - (Shhh! Whisper it very quietly - it was the third attempt to create the EU, or a nation called 'Europe' as Michel Barnier still insists)
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