I knew someone would play that song.
Perhaps in the short run that was true (and we're talking maybe 8 years at most). Over the longer term, the Nazis effectively destroyed their entire culture. If one looks at the position of Germany in say 1925 in regard to arts, mathematics, science, medicine, etc etc and then what it was at any point after the war, including today, there is no comparison. They chased away or killed their most productive and brightest citizens, both Jews and non-Jews. Concurrently, there isn't a single academic field in the US or Britain that did not gain immeasurably by the addition of German refugees.
I knew someone would play that song?
What the hell kind of comment is that?
Excuse the hell out of me for mentioning an apparently valid historical-economic position which appears to be supported by multiple non-anti-semetic, non-Holocaust-denying, non-axe-to-grind historians.
I'm sure the complete position contains enough nuance to differentiate short-term gains versus long-term losses, but feel free to act all supercilious.
Just off the top of my head and using plain old logic AND looking objectively.
Let's say we start with the apparent Nazi belief that the Jewish scientists, artists, doctors et al really
were sub-human and had nothing to offer that the good Aryan types couldn't (eventually) provide. If they
truly had that belief (and there's no reason to believe they didn't), then they would have had no reason to predict the massive loss to their country that would result in the long term.
Thus their short-term choices of death, theft and exile would have been internally consistant with their ethnic superiority position. Due to the war, there's no reason to believe they even had a glimmer of what they lost, until maybe when they realized how badly they needed the Jewish physicists to work on the bomb.
The
argument is that the Nazi's
thought the massive theft made sense and thus explains their choices, not that it actually
did make sense or was correct or wise long term.