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silvertip43
2008-12-22, 13:17
I found the following excerpt on the web, and would like to have some comments on it:

Reading over the posts in this thread takes me back to my university days. It was during a class discussion of what percentage of the German people were actually Nazis that the professor noted that although only a small fraction of the people were actually members of the Nazi party, that the fraction was still larger than the official membership of the Democratic and Republican parties combined. After a few moments of stunned silence, the place erupted as virtually everyone tried to register their disagreement with this statement—at once! Unperturbed, "Black Jack" let them rave on for a couple of minutes, then added the information that fewer citizens of the United States could show you a party card than could the citizens of the USSR. He was told by the whole class that Americans didn't have to have party cards to belong to a political party—that their choice of party was a private matter, and not a matter of record anywhere, whereupon the professor asked if the students hadn't noticed that they had to declare their party to vote in a North Carolina primary. He then pulled out a party membership card and showed it to the class at large, walking up and down the aisles with it until everyone had seen it. Still stunned, and not believing half of this, I couldn't tell you to this day if it was for the Democrat or Republican party. But I spent several hours in the library after that, and finally had to conclude he had given us the straight skinny on this—that there was a difference between "considering" oneself a member of a particular party, and actually "being" a member of that political party.

In later years, I would mention this incident from time to time. Active politicians, of state or higher level, and political science graduates would give me an amused, somewhat tolerant and usually condescending smile, while the great mass of people would simply refuse to believe it. I believe the most egregious example of self-deception I ever witnessed was when the Human Resources Director at a company I was then working for tried to irritate an older man who was known as the original hard-shell Democrat by giving him an actual application for a party card. He thought he was giving the old fellow a form to permit him to make a contribution to the Republican party. And that was true: a contribution was expected, but the text of the thing made it clear that it was an application for party membership. Even so, with the words on paper, the HR Director refused to accept that his dedication to the Republican cause was not sufficient for him to truly be a Republican party member in the strictest sense of the word.

SWATFAG
2008-12-22, 19:24
Party Membership

issued by the party - not the state

issued indiscriminately to those who are already members of any party

used to develop mailing lists for donations

ArgonPlasma2000
2008-12-22, 20:51
So how many Germans were actual card-carrying members of the Nazi party anyway?

silvertip43
2008-12-22, 23:09
So how many Germans were actual card-carrying members of the Nazi party anyway?

While I have no idea what figures were originally given the author of this little excerpt, some quick research says that at its peak, the National Socialist German Worker's Party consisted of about 5.2 million in a total population of 78 million, or about 6.7 percent of the population. (This is quick stuff, and I do not vouch for the absolute accuracy of the figures.)

ArgonPlasma2000
2008-12-23, 01:07
While I have no idea what figures were originally given the author of this little excerpt, some quick research says that at its peak, the National Socialist German Worker's Party consisted of about 5.2 million in a total population of 78 million, or about 6.7 percent of the population. (This is quick stuff, and I do not vouch for the absolute accuracy of the figures.)

I didn;t expect exact statistics. It's stil interesting nonetheless, especially after hearing about how many conscripts there were in the German army circa WW2.