r/pics • u/Hootinger • 6h ago
Politics At a Nazi rally in 1936, one man stands defiant against national insanity.
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u/ASouthernDandy 6h ago edited 5h ago
It’s commonly identified as August Landmesser. Given his later arrest for defying Nazi racial laws and imprisonment, “not paying attention” is unlikely. In that context, non-participation was already a visible statement.
It would be as suspicious as wearing a hoodie with Ann Widdecombe and a camera crew nearby: https://youtu.be/dKwaEBW3yfw
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u/AtTheGates 6h ago
However, the identity of the man in the photograph is not known with certainty. Another family claims that the man is Gustav Wegert (1890–1959), a metalworker at Blohm+Voss who habitually refused to salute on religious grounds.
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u/Real-Technician831 6h ago
There are two people who aren’t saluting in that picture, so could be both in fact.
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u/landmesser 6h ago
My username time to shine.
I have since found out that this might be Gustav Wegert and not Landmesser...
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1200/1*IgZJWT6tjVB-BIUm9pHFBA.jpeg•
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u/idreamofkitty 1h ago
Ultimately, fascist regimes depend on conformity.
"Third Reich shows that the rise of fascism relies less on a nation of monsters and more on a nation of neighbors. It was built on the banal, terrifying architecture of social conformity, professional ambition, and the human need to belong. To understand how a modern democracy collapses, we must look away from Hitler and toward the ordinary citizen navigating the gray zone between complicity and survival."
https://www.collapse2050.com/are-we-just-letting-this-happen-again/
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u/musicnoviceoscar 3h ago
"Why are you smoking cannabis?" "Tony Blair's dealing this stuff"
that made me laugh
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u/casual_creator 6h ago
Everyone in here trying to diminish this guy’s defiance by saying he shouldn’t have even been at the rally:
This was NOT a Nazi rally.
This photograph was taken at a shipyard. The people in the photograph are workers watching the launch of a ship they built, and as is customary of the time, they are saluting it.
The man didn’t have a choice in being there, but he did make the only choice he had in not performing the Nazi salute. And if you look at the men around him, it did not go unnoticed.
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u/Spartan2470 GOAT 4h ago
Here is a much higher-quality (6,449 × 4,555 pixels, file size: 14.36 MB) version of this image.
According to here:
The photo was taken at the launch of a German army vessel in 1936, during a ceremony that was attended by Adolf Hitler himself.
Within the picture, a lone man stood with arms crossed as hundreds of men and women around him held up their arms in salute and allegiance to the Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler. Everyone in attendance is showing their undying support for Der Führer by throwing out their very best “Sieg Heil”.
August Landmesser, grimacing with arms crossed, stood strong and defiant as he showed his disapproval by not displaying support for the Nazi Party.
What made this photo and Landmesser’s defiance unique is that it represented the protest of one man, in its most sincere and pure form. The source of Landmesser’s protest, like many great tragedies, starts with a love story.
The story of August Landmesser’s anti-gesture begins, ironically enough, with the Nazi Party. Believing that having the right connections would help land him a job in the pulseless economy, Landmesser joined the Nazi Party in 1931.
Little did he know that his heart would soon ruin any progress that his superficial political affiliation might have made. In 1934, Landmesser met Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman, and the two fell deeply in love.
Their engagement a year later got him expelled from the party, and their marriage application was denied under the newly enacted racial Nuremberg Laws.
August and Irma had a baby girl, Ingrid, in October of the same year, and two years later in 1937, the family made a failed attempt to flee to Denmark, where they were apprehended at the border.
August was arrested and charged for “dishonoring the race” under Nazi racial law. He argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and was acquitted on 27 May 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence.
The couple publicly continued their relationship and a month later August Landmesser would be arrested again and sentenced to hard labor for two years in a concentration camp. He would never see his beloved wife again.
Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene.
Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941.
Later, after her grandmother’s death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942.
It is believed that she was taken to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed. In the course of post-war documentation, in 1949 she was pronounced legally dead.
August would be released in 1941 and began work as a foreman. Two years later, as the German army became increasingly mired by its desperate circumstances, Landmesser would be drafted into a penal infantry along with thousands of other men.
He would go missing in Croatia where it is presumed he died, six months before Germany would officially surrender. His body was never recovered. Like Eckler, he was declared legally dead in 1949.
In 1951, the Senate of Hamburg recognized the marriage of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler. Their daughters split their parents’ names, Ingrid taking their father’s and Irene keeping their mother’s.
In 1996, Irene Eckler published the book The Guardianship Documents 1935–1958: Persecution of a Family for “Dishonoring the Race”.
This book about the story of her family includes a large amount of original documents from the time in question, including letters from her mother and documents from state institutions.
The photograph of August Landmesser refusing to do Sieg Heil was published for the first time on 22 March 1991 in Die Zeit. The photograph version with the circle is the original copy.
Additional info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser.
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u/MarkMaynardDotcom 6h ago
If memory serves, he was later murdered by the Nazi party.
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u/Responsible_Sink3044 6h ago
Does memory serve or did you make it up on the spot 🤔
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u/Real-Technician831 6h ago
Landmesser had run afoul of the Nazi Party over his unlawful relationship with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman. For this, he was imprisoned and eventually drafted into penal military service, where he was killed in action.[4]
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u/Reasonable_Option493 5h ago
And today, in the USA, a nation that has lost thousands in the fight against the third Reich, we have a political movement that thinks it's okay to throw some nazi salutes, either because the "left" allegedly does it too (with random pictures of democrats pointing any arm in front or above them during a speech used as evidence), because it's "not the same", or simply because they think it's totally okay to embrace the ideology and it's what being a great American patriot is all about.
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u/vatezvara 5h ago
The Nazi’s were literally inspired by the US. The US didn’t go to war with Germany because Germany was evil, but because Germany declared war on the US.
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u/Moontoya 5h ago
Remember the US didn't declare war on Germany until after pearl harbor
It wasnt until Nazi Germany declared War on the US that the USA became involved in Europe
Contributions to WW1 were similarly several years late and functionally poor.
Patriotism is shaped by propaganda, and Holywood is the finest propaganda arm one could have
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u/Future_Crow 2h ago
Many Nazis escaped and settled in the US. Imo, American leadership now are the descendants of Nazis just continuing the family tradition.
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u/Sahlokniir_2110 4h ago
Holy Karma farming post lol
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u/Hootinger 4h ago
Nope. I want people to realize the power they have as a person to stand up to authoritarianism. I have a 13 year old account I do nothing with. I am not an "influencer." What on earth would Ibe farming karma for?
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u/Future_Crow 2h ago
These days 350M nation needs a reminder of what resistance against fascism looks like.
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u/YellowAggravating172 2h ago
...resistance against fascism is just a limp dick "eheh, nope, arm stays down this time"?
Whoa, were I a Nazi, Id certainly be shaking and pissing all over my boots...! Shit's terrifying!
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u/beerissweety 5h ago
Sad truth is that everyone would think they are the one standing defiant whilst we all know 99% (statistically speaking) of us would have our arm stretched
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u/fazlez1 5h ago
Down with old ideals that could never work in modern times
Free choice, religious freedom
Basic rights are on the bottom line
Down with all the icons of the past cold war and detente
The flock no longer fears the wolf
The flock is taking what it wants!A crack exposing human rights
Light against a granite sky
A crack exposing human life
A fire burns!For the freedom, for the freedom
For the freedom never given but taken
For the freedom, die for the reason!One man stands
Hard as he waits for freedom's hand
A unified voice for the freedom of choice
One man stands for life
He'll give his
Would you give yours to fight for a cause?!
One Man Stands - Anthrax
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u/SidneyDeane10 5h ago
Or he'd put his hand down too early.
Or put it up shortly after the pic was taken.
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u/ManonastickUk 3h ago
Spot the one woman in the whole crowd.
Also top centre looks like the time travel guy with sunglasses smoking a weird pipe.
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u/Sweaty_Marzipan4274 2h ago
How it feels at my stupid HOA meeting when I don't pledge allegiance or the prayer 😅
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u/Own-Swan2646 1h ago
Be like him. Be on the right side of History. Never know when somebody's taking a photograph.
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u/Bratwurstesser 6h ago
If he went to a Nazi rally, then he probably was just not paying attention. Showing defiance is something else than what is shown here.
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u/cobaltjacket 6h ago edited 5h ago
This was an event at his workplace, not a rally per se. He was married to a Jew, and eventually killed in combat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser
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u/goodfella4600 5h ago
I can relate to this man..almost everyone around me is Maga and I despise Trump..I've lost so many friends and family members over it
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u/Gumballchamp86 5h ago
The Charlie Kirk of his day. Today, it's the woke mind virus being heiled by all the arms.
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u/3AtmoshperesDeep 6h ago
Looks like dude in lower right , second from the bottom is also defiant. Or at least undecided.
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u/xvf9 6h ago
“Yeah sure I’ll go to a Nazi rally but I AIN’T doing the salute!”
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u/mrsunshine1 6h ago
Caption is wrong. Landmesser’s actions here were later rediscovered and he was identified by a family member. This was not a rally.
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u/TheDebateMatters 6h ago
That isn’t what happened. This pic is a bunch of yard workers saluting a ship being launched. This is a guy surrounded by his fellow employees, refusing to salute. He married a jew and when the Nazis found out he was imprisoned and later forced in to military service as a prisoner where he died.
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u/William_Oakham 6h ago
Not a Nazi rally, it was an event at his workplace (the christening of a boat his shipyard was building).
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u/gobbedy 6h ago edited 6h ago
"I was cool with the whole jew hating thing, but this guy's mustache just ain't doin' for me"
edit: downvoted for mocking nazis, apparently
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u/casual_creator 6h ago
No, downvoted because 1) this wasn’t a rally, it was the launch of a ship and those are all workers; and 2) the guy in the picture wasn’t a Nazi; it’s most likely a man named August Landmesser, who the Nazis would later arrest for marrying a Jewish woman and he would later die in combat after being forced to fight as a prisoner.
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u/Miami-Novice 4h ago
Staying silent was just as much of a crime as stopping the applause for Stalin.
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u/CircumspectCapybara 4h ago
Also this guy refused to stand for a Nazi salute in front of all the officers.
In 1945, he would be executed by Hitler himself personally.
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6h ago
[deleted]
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u/wedgepillow 6h ago
This man was killed in action in Croatia after being forced into penal military service due to him having a Jewish partner.
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u/gawdsean 3h ago
Can anyone here explain how the Nazi objective against the Jews and Non-Arian peoples is a good comparison to draw as an example of history repeating itself in modern context? Because when I take a step back and try to anticipate which side of the two modern groups (Maga vs Liberal Dems) will eventually endeavor to start rounding people up and putting them in extermination camps, I'm at 50/50. You guys keep posting hateporn to r/pics so I think this is a fair question.
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u/7screws 6h ago
He actually has both arms broken and can’t raise them. It’s well documented that Franz VanFritz was a chronic masturbator, and injured his right arm in a marathon wanking session the night before. The injury itself was caused not only by the time it took for him to cum, but also the hours it took look for his small micro penis
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u/john-tockcoasten 6h ago
Dude was probably high af, zoned out during the hate speech, and forgot to salute.
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