[Lifetime]

Kaz, actually I believe(my opinion I mean) that Hitler chose to give the people something to focus on, like how a drowning man will clutch to anything. As Istaron said, he used other races as focal points for their rage, in order to raise public support for his regime and deflect attention from what his agenda was.
I dont believe he inspired them to patriotism as you mean it. I DO believe that many Nazis WERE patriotic, as in, Loved Germany the nation, and loved the Greatness of Germany. However, when you use patriotism as a word for "loving the country", especially compared to America, then it surely was not that, because, from Yorick's post, patriotism does not mean hating everyone else, especially not those in your own nation! I believe Hitler defined patriotism as loyalty to the NAZI-Germany cause, because its easy to forget how, in that period, that there were many many races who called themselves German, even the Jewish, or minorities like the Gypsies or Homosexuals. Yet Hitler persecuted them all. I have been to a Nazi Death Camp in Poland (Auschwitz), and I dont believe that a gas chamber can tell the difference between a homosexual or an "anti-social" and a German-raised, German-speaking Jew. Hitler hated these people, and he promoted loyalty to NAZI-Germany, the Third Reich, and the superiority of the Aryan race(in Mein Kampf, he describes it as the Aryan man's race/struggle for survival, and that it requires them to take power by force to drive out contaminants to their race, eg. Jews). This, I'm sure you will agree with me, Kaz, is not what Germany is made up of. I have been there, and I know that Germany is MORE than just a nation of racists and skinheads(met them too the hard way I'm afraid). Hitler was promoting HIS brand of Germany, and therefore patriotism to a not-so-true form of Germany.
In my earlier post, the brand of Nazi patriotism I was talking about referred to love for Nazi-Germany, not the real Germany.
The common man was motivated for love by the real Germany, Hitler was elected by Jews as well as Aryans. But Hitler twisted this into Kaz's patriotism no.2, Blind and unflinchingly loyalty to Nazi-Germany, and the Third Reich.
I believe this better answer's Dio's original question. The differences between such a thing, as patriotism to a regime, and patriotism to the country that people have built with their own hands and have died for throughout history(I mean both Germany and the USA) is obvious.
Thus your question can be as accurately reflected as "whats the difference between that(Nazi-Germany), and that(Patriotic America OR Germany)", because German patriotism does not equal Nazi Facism.

Damn was that as clear as mud?

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