President-elect Donald Trump stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world by nominating Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary, tapping someone largely inexperienced and untested on the global stage to take over the world’s largest and most powerful military.
I’ve read a lot of stuff on the development of the military industrial complex in Germany and fascism’s relationship to it both while it was gaining power and had power and I’m not seeing any parallels, could you explain?
Fascism taking hold depends on a significant portion of people ignoring the threat it poses in its infancy. Saying Trump won’t do what he’s clearly trying to do, and even going so far as to say it might turn out to be a good thing, are both extremely bad ideas. Many Germans did not believe Hitler was the threat he turned out to be and as a consequence they did not react to his early actions as they would have had they known what was to come. Trump attempting to purge military leadership and install loyalists is an obvious example of an event that will come to be seen as a pivotal moment in history if we continue down this path we’re on.
Youre correct that there was a purge of military in Nazi Era Germany, but beyond that you kind of misunderstand the very collaborationist relationship that the nazis and the existing military industrial apparatus. I would really suggest reading The Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel for a little bit of a contextualization of why what you’re saying is kinda surface level analysis. Separately I’d recommend Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt.