Local amateur historian and occasional beloved family member Paul Poppavich vehemently dismisses news of fascism’s rising international tide, despite an encyclopedic knowledge of World War II history.
Anti-semitism of the kind that Hitler was spouting was very much a mainstream idea, not just in Germany and Austria but all across Europe and the US. Hitler was merely the most radical one that came to power.
It’s easy to frame WWII as the battle between democracy and fascism, but reality is a lot messier and more complicated than that.
Tons of US fascists fought in Europe. From their perspective, they weren’t fighting against fascism, they were fighting against Germany.
Anti-semitism of the kind that Hitler was spouting was very much a mainstream idea, not just in Germany and Austria but all across Europe and the US. Hitler was merely the most radical one that came to power.
It’s easy to frame WWII as the battle between democracy and fascism, but reality is a lot messier and more complicated than that.
Also, when it comes to US reactions to fascism from the 1920s on, WW2 was very much the EXCEPTION, not the rule.