What is the Next Victim Syndrome, as far as who it pertains to? Did Hitler have it, or his generals, or the population? It doesn’t seem like all three could hold it functionally the same in their minds at the same time, they all might feel euphoria and opportunity, but it’s very likely based on varying cognitive functions. Alexander couldn’t continue his lLiberation of India because his men clearly were no longer on board… at what point do you say it’s a group behavior of all, and when it starts diverging and conflicting?
Don’t get me wrong, I can put slot of historic campaigns from history into his definition, but it wouldn’t mean much to me as a historian, trying to explain cognitive functions of why it succeeded or failed in each case. Feudalism is particularly nuanced, your bound to have it go sideways in countless directions as far as motivations and alliegiances go. It runs into conflict with Natural Allies and Natural Enemies, balance of power, and internal stability. It doesn’t always promote synoecism, can ruin it in fact.
The battles between the various leagues in ancient Greece we’re always in fear of this kind of expansion… Third Sacred War and the eventual collapse of Greece to Macedonia is evidence of it:
I’m interested as it seems a Will To Power kind of argument, and the Greeks were done into it, as well as the Nietzscheans during WW2. The Soviet Union and US rapidly expanded militarily, but it was through alliances and proxy wars, China became a faction… but didn’t lead to a collapse like with the Nazis.
I’m guessing Nietzsche failed to detect a blindside in the feedback mechanisms here, but not certain what it is… his Nazis’ emulators ironically took up the Greek ideal too well, and got the shit kicked out of them, completely subjugated, as the Greeks before them had been.
I found this tangentially related, but interested, longest quote of a text I’ve ever seen Wikipedia allow:
I haven’t really read any of those guys, but will note adopting tactics from another country isn’t evidence your feared them, but rather pragmatism on the part of a general staff to stay modern and eclectic.
You have a tactical synthesis… every piece of the chess board has a abstract capacity to follow rules on what they can do and not do successfully in attacking the other. You can’t win a game of chess without calling out “check” first, in order to do that you have to understand how the pieces can play together.
Obviously both sides feared one another, but you can emulate one another as well, which both sides did. Both sides had ambitions on the other as well… rest assured, WW2 did happen, and for reasons. I’m not certain what the necessity of historians bickering against one another matters here, they both seem to of missed the point… Hitler was a twisted evil asshole, so was Stalin, both Gulags and Basis Concentration Camps borrowed from the Boer War, and political exile used since antiquity. It seems a shit headed argument either way, trying to make Hitler and Stalin less human, two dimensional? Why can’t they be as human as we are in noticing their states were very similar, and could benefit from adopting similar methods? Hitler is still fully to be blamed for bring Hitler. So is Stalin. Both mimed the other, and the philosophical tyranny their public’s expected of them. Both were inept regiems for not trying to see past their era… both operated under similar conditions, similar concepts, similar symbols. Stalin got lucky and survived. Very lucky. Both we’re original copies of the other, and both left a bad taste in one another’s mouth… hard to see your own reflection in the eyes of the enemy.