Trump - "I concede my time to the VP because I'm out of useful things to say. I do, however reserve the right to complain about 60 Minutes not interviewing me!"
Probably a little more than 10% would be familiar with the term and loosely relate it to Nazi Germany and Jews but I would guess that maybe 3% or fewer would be able to substantively communicate what actually happened or its significance.
My guess is substantially fewer. I'm in the UK where we spend a significant amount of educational/cultural time on WW2. I'm what the majority would consider highly educated, albeit in unrelated areas. Even so, I cannot say that I could accurately describe Kristallnacht beyond the absolute vaguest of idiot summaries off the top of my head.
I'm with you. I'd consider my education level above average and I hadn't heard of it (or at least recall) until just this week. I get the gist of it based on context but couldn't tell you any details. I even took a couple extra history courses in college but that was almost 20 years ago and I haven't had to think about any of the intricate details since then. Memorizing the intricate details decades later (or even during the semester) wasn't really the point of those courses anyway.
I also remember how those world history courses were taught with a mind toward the grand arc of history, with details skimmed over. Specifically, I had a professor that argued that Hitler was only responsible for 20% of the underlying causes of WW2, so we spent more time on the Treaty of Versailles and draconian war reparations than the rise of the Nazi Party.
Now, not to say that he was wrong in general. Hitler's rise is impossible without a deeply aggrieved nation. Italy and Japan also were aggrieved. But...the specific chain of events and the personalities within the Nazi Party and their methods are something we can learn from. It gives us insight into society's sometimes dark chemistry of human personalities. The Nazis were really weird, highly self-contradictory, did lots of things that were extraordinarily dumb, and still achieved totalitarian power. We should all know their playbook in order to recognize when somebody is using it.
I would realistically guess somewhere between 3-5%. I don't recall it being mentioned in school in the 90s. I only know of it because I watched a ton WWII documentaries because I'm a nerd.
Well, now that a party-nominated candidate for fucking president has suggested it, now's a great time to start educating people.
Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was a date (the night of November 9th, lasting into the 10th, 1938), on which the Nazi regime in Germany gave its "law enforcers", such as the SS, carte blanche to destroy Jewish businesses, synagogues, and homes, and round up any Jews they found to be sent to detention camps. Citizens and members of the Hitler Youth were encouraged to participate. Higher authorities did not intervene, and the wanton nationwide destruction of citizens' property and health was not prosecuted. It was a major, vital step toward the normalization of violence against the undesirable "other" within the country, which escalated further afterward - I shouldn't have to detail the events that followed.
I know how this sentence is viewed these days, but if you have any doubts or want more information about the event, I invite you to do your own research. And if this government-sanctioned attack on a sub-group of citizens sounds similar to something someone has suggested recently, I invite you to consider the implications of that for yourself as well.
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u/297andcounting Oct 01 '24
Trump - "I concede my time to the VP because I'm out of useful things to say. I do, however reserve the right to complain about 60 Minutes not interviewing me!"