A reader sent a link to Mark Mazower’s Book, Hitler’s Empire:How the Nazis Ruled Europe. I haven’t read it, but the summary and editorial reviews at Amazon describe it as an account of how Hitler ruined himself by putting his political theories ahead of everything. Although it is little remembered today, the Fuhrer was a revolutionary in the sense of being out to upset the established order, put his racial and political theories into effect and generally, remake the world according to his own image.
Nazi articles of faith amounted to grotesque fantasies about how the New Order would function, and they couldn’t possibly survive prolonged, or even relatively short, clashes with reality. Leaving morality aside, the Holocaust made no economic sense at a time when Germany was desperately short of workers. When Victor Brack, one of the officials charged with carrying out the Final Solution, suggested that between 2 and 3 million Jews could be sterilized and put to work rather than killed, Hitler wasn’t interested. The German leader’s plans for the rest of the people in the East were even more absurd in economic terms, since they involved the majority of the local inhabitants, not just minorities. Under Nazi doctrine, Germanization was the overarching goal, which meant eliminating as many non-Germans as possible and finding and elevating local Germans or bringing in new German settlers. But after Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, 90 percent of the inhabitants of German-occupied territory were Poles and only 6 percent ethnic Germans. And as the empire grew, the proportions of ethnic Germans became even smaller.
The book is apparently a story of ideology gone amuck. The Bush administration has been taken to task for the supposed folly of trying to “bring freedom to the middle east”. And maybe it was a foolish endeavor. But it’s fair to observe that many of the current proponents of Hope and Change hope to embark on even more far-ranging changes: to the economy, the environment, the way the world is governed, to the way we think. We’re only at the beginning of the process. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
Geroge W. Bush has planted a seed of democracy in Iraq, that given a secure environment, may yet grow to become a mighty Oak.
Wretchard, Obama and Company are making war on their enemies: White Men, particularly working class White men.
Reich is in the news saying that the Stimulus/Bailout money should EXCLUDE White men, and in particular skilled working class White men.
Instead the money should go exclusively to women, gays, non-Whites, the long-term unemployed non-Whites.
Well, of course. This is part of the war, not ideology, of Wealthy White Yuppies on lower-status Whites, in alliance with non-Whites and women.
We can’t all get along, as Rodney King wondered, because we are indeed enemies. Government exists to take money from Working class White Men and give it to non-Whites, women, and elite White men. While preventing any money spent on Working class White men.
This is not social engineering and ideology, it’s a pure social WAR. It’s why the West is weak.
It’s extremely far-fetched to compare Hitler’s Empire to the America of either George Bush or Barrack Obama. For better or worse, Bush resembled a 19th-Century British liberal expansionist like (the first) Chamberlain or Balfour, while Obama is merely a blank slate. He may, at worst, someday become a Chavez or Allende, but neither was a Hitler. At best, who can say? Another FDR? Unlikely but possible.
Hope: Bush was not an expansionist. He was not building an empire over there. That is just nonsense.
And given how the left is behaving, the Nazi analogy has some freight. Obama is not just not applying socialism along the same lines. He is not applying it to a “Volk” and a Nation, but certainly is applying it across racial lines. It is sort of the inversion of Nazi racisl socialism.
The Left really does hate America and it really does hate white people, particularly the middlle class.
Having all that anti-white rhetoric at a presidential inauguration is just chilling; if one substituted “whites” for “Jews”, it would sound much like a nazi rally speech. Sort of looked like one too. The control of the media is quite in line with Nazi propaganda effort as well.
So it is definitely totalitarian socialism, with a strong component borrowed from the Soviets, and with a touch of Maoism thrown in. This is of course what Chavez is doing too.
So the comparison is not far fetched at all. Just wait until there is a chapter of Organizing America opens near you. Looks like the SA in Denim and tee shirts. Scary stuff. The Left is certainly as loony as the Nazis were in the 1930′s, and there is nothing new at all about “the New Age”. One fears that he will spring a Reichstag fire and a Krystallnatch. Maybe the Muslims will do both for him.
America needs to wake up to it ASAP.
Apropos Wretchards post, The question to me is if Obsms (or really, the puppetmasters behind him) are sincere in actaully implementing these bizarre social engineering projects, or are they just vehicles to destroy America as a world power. One certainly could not devise a better strategy to eliminate America as a bastion of liberty in a world of beserkers and enslavers.
Whatever the case, these idiotic “ideas” of the Democrats will fail. Along with their treason of the last 8 years, this leftist putsch of this administration cannot help but damage America one way or another.
We can only hope that the country will see what this is all about soon.
He only got 52% of the popular vote, so maybe there is hope. The Democrats tend to see mandates in elections that are not there. Media manipulation and vote fraud do not have that long of a shelf life.
We’ll know where he’s going when he demands the military swear personal loyalty to him and not to the country. Valkyrie, anyone?
I am currently reading “The sovereign individual” and it is making way too many hairs stand up on my neck. As the authors speak directly to what is happening in the world today. Not bad for a book written in 1996.
Jim
One would think that President Obama would have better things to do than gloating about last November’s election returns and telling people what radio stations not to listen to.
Unfortunately, some of Obama’s opponents are no improvement over him. There are many good and principled reasons to oppose the Obama administration. Yet, one would think it would be possible to oppose the Obama administration without calling for a race war.
I regard BHO, the black supremacists, and the white supremacists to be on the same side against those who believe in a Republic indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Some people still believe in the idea of the United States of America, and that includes some who oppose BHO.
I’m stunned at the blindness of people. Even well meaning non-liberals.
Obama has no ethics at all. Democrats have no ethics at all. The things Obama has been allowed to get away with before the campaign, during the campaign and since are going to be alarming in historical retrospect.
One minor example. Rodham-Clinton.
What could possibly be a bigger conflict of interest than her and her husband recieving MILLIONS AND MILLIONS AND MILLIONS from foreign goverments.
There are dozens of examples. Geithner, Holder, Rezko, Wright, on and on and on and on and on.
Our country has turned a complete blind eye on ethics and morality for a MEDIA MADE-IDOL.
Whiskey, you’d think someone named Reich might want to be extra careful about espousing racial prescriptions.
Alexis: Just who are Obama’s opponents that you find so objectionable?
I confess that I find your comment irksome.
If anyone is calling for a race war it is the Left. In fact, they have been conducting a “Cold Race War” for decades. They most certainly do not share your notions of “being against the republic” at all, they would see you as “being against the republic”, their “republic of the future” that is. They will not make such fine distinctions about your opposition to Obama, you can count on that. Just what do you imagine the intent is behind all this “hate crime” nonsense? Just who is the target?
No GOP president would have a racist, inaugural “prayer” like Lowery’s at an inauguration.
It would not even occur to a President from the party of Lincoln and Martin Luther King to do anything remotely like this. It is just scandalous. If the Democrats had any decency at all, Obama would apologize for it. But he does not. Reich’s “testimony” was truly shocking. It should never have happened, ever. It too should be denounced by the Democrats. Reich could be dismissed and disregarded by the Democrat Party. But is has not been denounced. he has not been discarded. Far from it. The fact that he can so casually engage in racist talk before a congressional audience with the cameras rolling would indicate that this sort of discussion goes on all the time behind closed doors, and at the cabinet level. It is beyond belief that there was a discussion about excluding whites from a stimulus plan. My goodness, look what they did to Trent Lott!
And that business of trying to tar Palin supports as racist hicks — they actually put plants in the audiences, as I recall, what about that?
And here’s a flash: “The White Supremest Movement” is mostly an invented bogey man of the Left. You are way off base here, and you should not use it to slander opposition to Obama in any way. This is a just tiny fringe group that exists mostly in prison “community”, but sooner or later it pops up in almost “Cop Shows” as if most (non-democrat) white people would be out there burning crosses in their back yards if they only had a chance. The so called “White Supremacist Movement” is nothing like the Black Muslims or LaRaza which are broad-based and openly racist organizations, organizations that get some taxpayer bucks,and plenyy of MSM “cover”. Remember all the bizarre “militia” propaganda during the Clinton years? Most of that was a total fiction. The media wanted us to think that out in the hinterlands those traitorous Whites were preparing to take over the country. They were just guys at hunting clubs. This is a highly insulting racial slander. Look for a repeat of that, and it will be on steroids. Golly, you still see this in TV shows made now. What a vile racist slander of whites in Flyover Country.
We hear just ridiculous slander of the GOP–the party of Abolition–as racist from the Democrats, the party of Slavery, the Copperheads, the KKK, Jim Crow and the Dixiecrats. Until the Democrat started giving handout to the Black Community, Almost every Black, particular in the South, voted Republican. And yet we hear this slander.
We hear about the racist GOP south when many of the statehouses have been decidedly Democrat for most of the post www2 period.
They have just ruined the educational system with their racial politics. They have pumped up the urban black communities with hatred and distrust for white people for generations.
Frankly, I think you are inverting the the problem (and the culprits) in this statement, and it is more than a little offensive. It is a tactic I would expect out of a Liberal, not you. It surprises me for I generally enjoy your posts.
The early propaganda of the Nazis anti-jewish push were not more vile than the anti-white garbage that we are getting out of the Democrats.
Certainly if the Democrats keep up this assault, it will be met by racially orient politics. Are you suggesting that it inappropriate only for non-elite whites to engage in it? Are you saying racial identity is not allowed only for white people?
When they ad 40 million illegal Hispanics, it may be they only fighting chance that white people have.
they only fighting= the only fighting
Obama Opens Up On Rush Limbaugh
Posted: 8:13 pm
January 23, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
Obama Reaches Out to the Muslim World
I ran into Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, one of American’s Islam’s foremost scholars, at the Presidential Prayer Service on Wednesday. His first words to me were, “This President is reaching out to us. It’s good for the Muslim world to hear that.”
“And good for America to hear it, too” I responded.
Not only was Obama the first President to mention the word “Muslim” in an inauguration speech, he did it with his hand out instead of with his fist clenched (to borrow a Presidential phrase). To say that there will be a new relationship with the Muslim world based on mutual interests means that it could be serious and long-lasting – America is not doing this out of charity, but out of strategy. To say that it will be based on mutual respect means that the Obama administration intends to approach 1/5 of humanity with a sense of dignity and equality, instead of threat and condescension.
All too true.
The Republicans need to start listening to NPR, all the time. Because Rush will just tell them what they should already know.
Listening to NPR will tell them a lot about what President Obama and his allies would like to do. Clues, they are everywhere.
So listen to NPR, and watch Olbermann and Co., and you will begin to realize just how deeply these people revile certain aspects of this country. The expediency of propaganda, the application of semantics, the revisionist re-definition of reality.
@Charles #13: Obamam is way late to the party. The Pope has more or less formalized how Christians should treat/deal with Muslims.
AND HE GOT 138 OF THEIR CLERICS TO AGREE TO
HIS PRINCIPLES! (Which rather resemble the Bush Doctrine.)
I find the Rev Lowerys rhyming phrases more amusing than insulting or threatening. Thoughtlessness was his worst sin.
About Robert Reich. I wish his father and grandfather were both still alive. That way
he would be (drum roll please) The Third Reich! (ahem).
Hopefully, none of the people I care about, which includes all good Belmonters, will receive one dime of stimulus money. Those who are not recipients of this largesse will pull through hard times quicker and in better shape than those who are “favored”.
Give the money to our pet trolls, I say and tell them to use it in lieu of Preparation H!
Top Republican echoes Obama’s call to end sniping
Reuters ^ | January 23, 2009 | Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress’s most powerful Republican on Friday backed President Barack Obama’s call to set aside political differences and cooperate on efforts to revitalize the economy and resolve other issues.
Yet only time will tell if such rhetoric by Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell produces results — or deteriorates into more of the partisan bickering that has long marked Washington politics.
“People want their leaders to work together to solve problems, not to set traps,” McConnell said in a speech to the National Press Club. “The challenge now is for both parties to cooperate, not just in word but in deed.”
He can still be the third Reich, even if they’re dead. After all, the turd Reich was built on the flush of the others.
Lying and deception are allowed by Islam in the long war against the unbelievers. They will say whatever it takes to gain cover for what they are truly intending to accomplish. So, I wouldn’t take the nicey-nice b.s. about Obama and the Muslims too seriously just because HE does. Last I heard, none of their scriptures which guide how they are to treat with us kafirs have been repealed or abrogated. Allah hasn’t revealed anything new to them.
Unfortunately the lefties already used the Hitler comparison theme. Cried wolf so to speak.
If moslem aggression is caused by an eternal search for women, why would the movement be led by a rich arse with not four, but maybe four times four, wives, and god only how many kids scattered around, willing to give it all up, and go to the rear end of the earth and risk his life for jihad and the idiot book, and whose chief men were all Saudis too? Seems a lot more sensible to hang around the oasis, eat grapes and screw, boring as that may become.
@Bob 17: Well, let us resolve to make them put themselves in the toilet>
The Rhinoceros Charges:
At website thankW.com there is a thank you note you can sign to George W and Laura Bush.
And you can add some comments of your own if you like. I just did.
All trolls will be censored.
The Rhinoceros now withdraws.
Mongoose:
I am less than favorably impressed with Obama and his entourage. I am also less than favorably impressed with how the Republican Party has been portrayed as racist when much of the racism has come from the left. You are quite correct that the white supremacist movement is the bogeyman of the left, and that it is tiny in comparison to those watching it. Please note that I pointed that out in an earlier thread.
That said, opposition against Obama must be made in the name of a color-blind society. Robert Reich should be condemned as the racist he is, and he should be pointedly asked why it would be so wrong for white people to have jobs. (It is rather interesting that he is not volunteering to give up his job to someone with a darker hue; he expects other people to make that sacrifice for him.) There is a big difference between promoting a civil rights movement along the lines advocated by Ward Connerly and rallying “white working class people” behind a banner of race war. One should not alienate constituencies who could go to the opposition.
It is just plain wrong how an alliance of leftists and big business seeks to replace the voting power of existing Americans with the voting power of presently illegal immigrants. We need to enforce the laws we have and we need to reward immigrants who don’t cut in line. So, is the way to oppose the present regime to appeal to a mirror image of the racist sentiments espoused by Barack Obama’s administration? I hope not.
One of the reasons why America is in the predicament it is in today is that the Left has effectively monopolized commemorations of Martin Luther King Day. If conservatives are truly serious about regarding Martin Luther King Jr. as part of the conservative movement, conservatives would do well to challenge liberal and leftist attempts to appropriate his legacy. Martin Luther King Day should become a time to challenge an affirmative action regime that has become a continuation of Jim Crow by other means.
In many respects, I do regard myself as a variety of liberal – a pro-war “paleoliberal” who has become disgusted by the reflexive anti-war sentiment often descending into anti-Americanism that has taken over the Democratic Party. I do not pretend to be a “conservative”, although I could be regarded as a “Hamiltonian conservative”. My politics haven’t changed much. What has changed is my realization that the Left is corrupt, so corrupt that leftists and liberals could actually regard a megalomaniac speculator such a George Soros as a hero merely because he gives them trinkets.
It ought to be time to turn the tables on Barack Obama, Robert Reich, and the rest of their racist entourage. They should be condemned for their racism in the name of the principles of color blindness that should have been instituted instead of a modernized form of segregation called affirmative action.
One year ago, I kept on getting told by you-know-who that Barack Obama would never get elected to the Presidency because “white working class men” would never let it happen. President Obama got sworn in earlier this week. Now, I get told by the same you-know-who that the only way to oppose President Obama is to appeal to those same “white working class men” that I kept on being told would never let the election of Barack Obama happen in the first place. Perhaps, just perhaps, overturning the status quo needs to happen not by putting Humpty Dumpty back together but instead by assembling a new coalition that includes PUMA’s. I think it’s time to promote a vision of America where people are judged by the content of their character.
“…opposition against Obama must be made in the name of a color-blind society…”
Disagree. If Obama’s intent is to take from the worker bees in the name of reparation and affirmative action and give to the idle welfare bees or Katrina “victims” then how on earth can citizens remain color-blind? I’m not seeing anywhere that Obama has a true socialist intent to share with EVERYone. Even less that he thinks people should take responsibility for their own existance. He’s very very intent on spreading everyone’s wealth on one segment of society (and Kenya)(and Palestine), and to put blinders on about Obama’s personal racism in the name of equality is just stupid … and “progressive”.
@ 24. NahnCee
OK,
The thrust of the O’s policy is against productive non-elite white males.
Racist, sexist elitist and … what may be the label covering the productive aspect.
The issue here is not a race or sex. It is a sleigh of hand. The target group is the bearer of ideas of liberty. It is the groups that is most likely offer a resistance against a number of “plans”.
0 would not say that he wants to discriminate against the demographics that represent ideas of liberty, imagine how well would that go. So he needs to define that demographics by other means.
He fully expect people to start bickering about his triangulating criteria, rather then substance or the real target.
However, there is a potential for irony. The targeted group would be the least tainted by 0′s policies and in the long run, this particular aspect of policy would have unintended consequences of associating integrity with the target group in general perception, in contrast with the corruption seen all around.
Thus: “Look not tree, look forest!”
I should change my nick to “Typos’r'us”.
2×4: To a point.
It seems likely that there is a psychological component to the assault as well(and in Obama’s personal case, a neurotically racist one as well) This class/race war perfidy may not be all that fungible. More to the point, Obama is using this, he did not invent it. The “neural programming” has been in place and functioning for quite some time. The anti-white racism has been institutionalized for generations now.
In any event, should O succeed, the game is up; the only remaining “bearers of liberty” will be the Asian (and some Hispanic) entrepreneurs and small business owners, and they are a quite small group. These folks will no doubt be co-oped.
So your idea may be a distinction without much of a difference.
But to your point, besides being the bearers of liberty, they are the bearers of wealth – the real productive aggregated wealth of the middle classes (I grant that this can be seens as a part of “bearing liberty”). Now this aspect is “fungible” as a great many supporters of Obama are going to discover, and with no small alarm.
Certainly, you are on to something when you refer to unintended consequences but I doubt that they well stop there. There is going to be some “consciousness raising” out in flyover country. This will be a hard test for America to stand up to what is to come. It may boil down to a matter of communication.
Thus, it is not surprising that Obama would declare that Republicans must not listen to Limbaugh. It is shocking. Rudely so. It shows what vast ambitions they have and the even vast arrogance they posses. When things fall apart, it will not be pretty.
I fear that the Left may resort to a Muslim supplied Reichstag fire in order to keep power.
The GOP need to end the honeymoon as soon as possible. We have to force them to tip there hand by making them act before they are ready.
even vast=even vaster.
Dear Leader appeared to court the military at one ball, then snubbed the ball for decorated veterans. But far be it for me, a white truck driver, to question Dear Leader’s wisdom. But just in case Organizing America shows up around here, I will get my name on the waiting list for an AR 15. This ain’t Russia, Germany, Cuba, etc…
“Organizing AMerica” — good place to start would be the e-mail addresses of everyone who sent Bush a thank-you note.
2×4 – I understand what you’re saying about “bearers of liberty” but I wonder if it’s really that sophisticated. It seems to me that an Occam’s Razor simplest explanation would be better: O wants to take from the rich and give to the (black) poor. I just don’t see him staying awake at 3:00 in the morning wondering how he can corral the “bearers of liberty” … unless, of course, he’s been told to by some Saudi oil tick who thinks that bringing down a Christian democracy is more important than mere money.
The book is apparently a story of unhinged and poorly grounded ideology gone amuck.
Classical liberalism – the the mold of Locke and Montesquieu and the founding fathers in America – is reflective of a certain ideology.
Marxism/Leninism is another ideology, Leninism/Stalinism a further morphing still. Hitler’s was a morphing of Mussolini’s fascism, Mussolini’s fascism was an adaptation and morphing of his earlier Marxian praxis and ideology.
@ 30. NahnCee:
2×4 – I understand what you’re saying about “bearers of liberty” but I wonder if it’s really that sophisticated. It seems to me that an Occam’s Razor simplest explanation would be better: O wants to take from the rich and give to the (black) poor.
Your razor is dull, sharpen it. You could say he does want to give money to white females, hispanics, not just blacks… everybody but the productive white males. This is not something that would form a crux of his policy. It is buying off segments of population. But once they are secured, he could care a fig about poor blacks. It is just means, not the final goal.
I just don’t see him staying awake at 3:00 in the morning wondering how he can corral the “bearers of liberty”
He’s not an ideologue. He does not have to be. The course has been already charted by Gramsci and Ailinsky and others. He acts based on feelings more than some sophisticated precise plan, he already digested the plan and can focus policy roughly towards the target, with help from Axelrod and others. Not all white males are productive, of course, but those that aren’t are already so guilt ridden and pussified that he can disregard them. It all seems to be a PC stuff, but it is narrated so just for appearances.
… unless, of course, he’s been told to by some Saudi oil tick who thinks that bringing down a Christian democracy is more important than mere money.
They want both, but no, the are not the origin of the policy in this case.
Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Target: Bearers of Liberty Ideas
Freeze: Use exclusion matrix to pinpoint demographis
Personalize: Productive White Males
Polarize: Stimulus Package
Reply by Productive White Males: “Nuts.”
@ 27. Mongoose:
It seems likely that there is a psychological component to the assault as well(and in Obama’s personal case, a neurotically racist one as well) This class/race war perfidy may not be all that fungible. More to the point, Obama is using this, he did not invent it. The “neural programming” has been in place and functioning for quite some time. The anti-white racism has been institutionalized for generations now.
Yes. this component plays some role. The selection matrix is based more on memes than statistics.
In any event, should O succeed, the game is up; the only remaining “bearers of liberty” will be the Asian (and some Hispanic) entrepreneurs and small business owners, and they are a quite small group. These folks will no doubt be co-oped.
That’s a linear extrapolation. Sure, it is a method that takes into a consideration facts on the ground, and therefore valid. However, the human affairs are not constricted by it. All sorts of factors that are unknown variables will alter the extrapolation, often to a significant degree. It depends on what type strategy is chosen. Drip type could hold the extrapolation, while more radical tactics would create more tensors, or eddies. The drip method would result in a decade of hold on power, but eventually the opposition would form. There is nothing that would prevent it from happening, especially in a society that still remebers the “before”. A more radical method would polarize things in such a way that a clash is inevitable. What form it would take is hard to tell, it could lead up to some form of a civil war.
But to your point, besides being the bearers of liberty, they are the bearers of wealth – the real productive aggregated wealth of the middle classes (I grant that this can be seens as a part of “bearing liberty”). Now this aspect is “fungible” as a great many supporters of Obama are going to discover, and with no small alarm.
I would use a qualifier here – the wealth in this context is not a class factor (meaning being rich), it is a wealth that this group generates. I am sure you meant it that way, I am jiust clarifying.
I fear that the Left may resort to a Muslim supplied Reichstag fire in order to keep power.
Any element that would imply national security (or the lack of it thereof) may backfire a big way. People associate this aspect with Republicans/conservatives as the resolvers.
The GOP need to end the honeymoon as soon as possible. We have to force them to tip there hand by making them act before they are ready.
Yes, ya’ nailed it. Tough with the bunch of feckless Republicans in current Congress/Senate, though. GOP has to get a grip on itself.
@34. NahnCee
There is another segment that may join the PWMs–PUMAs, at least a good portion of them that got disillusioned permanently with donk perfidy.
Sirius-Sir:
Let me add that you would think that s Jew named Reich would want to stay away from racism.
@ 37. jerryofva
Correction: self-hating Jew.
Thanks to my sister female voters, we now have a “Dear Fuhrer” to lead the country. No wonder women voters are getting such a poor reputation. They sold us all out. But don’t blame me. I’m as mad at the corrupt socialist revolutionaries as everybody else who pays the bills.
I happen to be reading Antony Beevor’s book on Stalingrad right now, so I’ll bring things back to Wretchard’s post: It’s worth remembering that when Operation Barbarrossa began, many non-Russian Slavs greeted the German Army as liberators from Stalinist oppression and misrule. In fact, thousands of Ukranians served in the German Army, and by German accounts, fought ferociously. With a little finesse, they probably could have had a relatively helpful and friendly population in their rear as they pressed on to Moscow and the Volga. But instead, they insisted on treating the non-Russian Slavs as subhumans, as per Nazi doctrine, which did not encourage them to continue accepting German occupation willingly.
So even though I haven’t read Mazower either, I would guess that he’s on the right track. Nazi genocide, driven by their core ideology, probably made it harder to win the war in the East. But OTOH, if he hadn’t been a genocidal freak, Hitler probably wouldn’t have considered invading the USSR to begin with. Heck, even von Ribbentrop thought it was a bad idea, and told the Soviet ambassador so on the eve of the invasion.