paradoxile said:
Zyklon B is what was used in the gas chambers. It's a gas form of cyanide; I dunno what the chemical was originally used for, but it is indeed what was used in the gas chambers. At least it was in Auschwitz. According to wikipedia it was also developed by a Jew.
Racism is a pretty old phenomenon, I'm not sure where you would find the first instances of it. White supremacy probably didn't develop into its moderm form until Darwin came along, and to my knowledge it wasn't until the late 19th century, when Social Darwinist ideas were in vogue, that you see something that resembles what we consider today to be white supremacist thinking. It depends on how you look at slavery, also. I'd say the stuff we had in the 30s and 40s was a direct descendant of 19th century Social Darwinist thinking, and not so much that of, say, slaveholding Southern planters in the US.
Hitler also referred to Norse people as German "cousins" of sort, so I'm not surprised that there are Scandinavians who are ok with Nazi ideals (although I'm sure it's a very tiny minority). I doubt anyone argues that the Nazi occupation of Norway was a good thing; and since Social Darwinist ideas of race predate Hitler, there were probably racists in Norway long before the crazy mustasched guy came along. It's not like Hitler invented racism and anti-Semitism.
