Reply #25: Hitler "sweetened the deal" for the German people, too

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Building the Autobahns and rearming put people to work, children got free summer camps (where they were indoctrinated into Nazi ideology, but I'm sure a lot of parents thought in terms of, "Little Hans gets to spend two weeks hiking and swimming at no cost to us.")

If the Nazis had practiced only repression, they never would have been popular--and they were. Their repression was SELECTIVE. Jews were repressed and political dissidents were repressed, but for many people, especially the uninformed, the ones who didn't care to look beneath the surface, the "stability" that the Nazis provided was preferable to the social chaos and hyperinflation of the 1920s.

Mao's revolution was successful because it was the first time in Chinese history that any military force had respected the peasants (80% of the population) instead of abusing them and pillaging their farms. When their guerrillas needed food they would go to the nearby farms and BUY it instead of just taking it, as both the Japanese and Nationalists had done. The repression came later.