favourite year of the 20th Century

[Bungo the Mungo]

...and why?

[Minnie the Minx]

1974. Btw Coan are you eating or peuking on your avatar??

[Bungo the Mungo]

Eating a kebab! That 'filthy kitchen' photo was taken at the same time.

[The Modernist]

68.

Revolution was in the air. I remember inciting Danny Cohn -Bendit and Abbie Hoffman from my pushchair.

[meetthesonics]

1984 closely followed by '82. Has to do with a girl mainly. Doesn't everything?

[the masked man]

Of all these possibilities, I would choose 1989; the Berlin wall started to come down, acid house was in the charts, Technique and Disintegration were released and I moved into my own place place for the first time...

[blue sky]

1989. The year I left school then started doing my A levels. Even though I failed them miserably I still went on to get a 2:1 at degree level

[C]

1917

Bolshevik Revolution

We'd be overrun by Nazis if history hadn't unfolded as it did






.

[KeithPratt]

Dude, there wouldn't have been nazis if it wasn't for the Bolsheviks.

[Bungo the Mungo]

Indeed.

[yomptepi]

Communists eh?

What are you gonna do with them?

[Bungo the Mungo]

Financial crises - like the one we're experiencing right now - have led to the rise of extreme political parties in the past.

Are we about to see a swelling in the ranks of the BNP? the Communists?

[Minnie the Minx]

I think we have a 'fluid' thread on our hands.

[Goat Boy]

Dude, there wouldn't have been nazis if it wasn't for the Bolsheviks.

How so?

[KeithPratt]

The Nazi party grew out of the Freikorp movement which was formed to put down communist insurrection in Bavaria in 1919 along with Anton Drexler's German Worker's Party. Without the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, it is doubtful whether such revolutionary conditions on Germany could have existed.

[Goat Boy]

Ahhh, ok but it seems like a simplification to suggest that an extreme right wing party wouldn't have emerged in those economic conditions.

[The Modernist]

Ahhh, ok but it seems like a simplification to suggest that an extreme right wing party wouldn't have emerged in those economic conditions.

Also German nationalism had a separate history.

[C]

The Nazi party grew out of the Freikorp movement which was formed to put down communist insurrection in Bavaria in 1919 along with Anton Drexler's German Worker's Party.

Without the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, it is doubtful whether such revolutionary conditions on Germany could have existed.

The first part is historical fact.

The second part - your projection is poppycock.

Developmentally, from the ideology of Drexler to that of Hitler were fundamentally different. Agreed, initially Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, but were later downplayed in the 1930s to gain the support from industrial owners for the Nazis - focus was shifted to anti-Semitic themes





.

[KeithPratt]

One of the major factors of the Nazi party’s rise to power was that it never directly challenged the power of the state and was never perceived as a threat.

It would engage in bloodthirsty street battles with Communist gangs, but became a sort of de facto militia that would start fights in Communist neighbourhoods, baiting them. It was a very devious and cunning tactic. Their ideology and embryonic history with the martyr Horst Wessel is inextricably linked with the struggle against Communism and the Jews, both in their own country and later with Hitler’s “Judeao-Bolshevik world-conspiracy”, which admittedly only became much more vocal once the war in the East turned against them.

I don’t doubt that some sort of extreme right-wing party would have emerged in Germany after the shock defeat of WWI – but whether it had the specific characteristics that made the Nazi party what it was is a long shot.

[Geezee]

One of the major factors of the Nazi party’s rise to power was that it never directly challenged the power of the state and was never perceived as a threat.

It would engage in bloodthirsty street battles with Communist gangs, but became a sort of de facto militia that would start fights in Communist neighbourhoods, baiting them. It was a very devious and cunning tactic. Their ideology and embryonic history with the martyr Horst Wessel is inextricably linked with the struggle against Communism and the Jews, both in their own country and later with Hitler’s “Judeao-Bolshevik world-conspiracy”, which admittedly only became much more vocal once the war in the East turned against them.

I don’t doubt that some sort of extreme right-wing party would have emerged in Germany after the shock defeat of WWI – but whether it had the specific characteristics that made the Nazi party what it was is a long shot.

agreed - its pronounced anti-communist agenda is actually what differentiated it from most other extreme right parties in Germany at the time (and there were plenty of them). most of the volkisch movements were antisemitic, but the Nazi party tied this to anticommunism to a far greater extent than the rest. i think it's entirely fair to say that Hitler's rise is highly dependent on spreading fear over the possibility of a communist revolution in Germany (which was a real and tangible threat at the time).

1917 is the turning point for so many things in the world - feminism, literature, social mobility, warfare, ideology - that there is no real comparison in my mind. the only competitor is 1945 perhaps because of the bomb, which changed everything. but in terms of favourite year i'd probably go with 1989 as well - i was only about 12 but i could sense so many things changing, and it is the last year of "childhood" that I can remember...the following year my father uprooted my family and i quite literally stopped smiling for about 7 years.