Did Hitler REALLY make the trains run on time?

[SpuriusMaximus]

Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, it was fascist propoganda, that was the only point to it. It was a claim that he made personally, I doubt he was trying to extoll that he operated by making his followers scared of him, they were his trains,

Italian fascism was an interesting beast, and it doesn't always make sense to those of us from other cultures.

E.g., you probably wouldn't come to the idea of making someone toast with castor oil, just to see if they can make it home before crapping their pants, as a punishment or instrument of terror. But the Italian fascists did just that.

E.g., if you had such an instrument of terror, you would think one wouldn't brag about it. But that would be wrong again. Italian fascists even made pubs display a bottle of castor oil in the window, to remind patrons of what happens if they get too drunk and cause a disturbance or otherwise do something dumb.

So exactly what Il Duce meant about the trains, I guess it'll remain a mystery

 

[catsmate]

Actually Hitler didn't make the trains run on time: Herman Hollerith did.......
The German railway network (the Reichsbahn) made extensive use of Hollerith's punch-card tabulators, leading to substantial improvements in efficiency.

 

[Simon39759]

I always thought the expression was a reference to the labour organizations. They often, in my experience, are very powerful in public railways which means that railways are a battleground for political activism.
So, I assumed, the politically tumultuous 1920ies, railways were marked by strikes and disturbances. These would have ceased following the crack-down on labour organizations conducted by the facist regime.

Well; that was my knee-jerk reading... Take that with a few truckloads of salt.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Italian fascism was an interesting beast, and it doesn't always make sense to those of us from other cultures.

E.g., you probably wouldn't come to the idea of making someone toast with castor oil, just to see if they can make it home before crapping their pants, as a punishment or instrument of terror. But the Italian fascists did just that.

E.g., if you had such an instrument of terror, you would think one wouldn't brag about it. But that would be wrong again. Italian fascists even made pubs display a bottle of castor oil in the window, to remind patrons of what happens if they get too drunk and cause a disturbance or otherwise do something dumb.

So exactly what Il Duce meant about the trains, I guess it'll remain a mystery

You bet your buppi that that didn't make sense. What behavior was the drinking the castor oil a punishment for?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You bet your buppi that that didn't make sense. What behavior was the drinking the castor oil a punishment for?

Apparently from causing a drunken ruckus to speaking against Il Duce, which (the latter) would have probably earned you a far nastier visit from the Gestapo in Germany.

 

[malbui]

Apparently from causing a drunken ruckus to speaking against Il Duce, which (the latter) would have probably earned you a far nastier visit from the Gestapo in Germany.

There are a fair few references to the castor oil punishment in Giovanni Guareschi's masterly Don Camillo stories, set in chaotic post-WW2 Italy but containing lots of flashbacks to pre-war events. When I first read those stories as a kid, I really didn't understand the purpose of the glass of castor oil .

 

[Shrike]

Under Stalin people were rounded up by the Jewish secret police just to fill quotas.

 

[Nonpareil]

Under Stalin people were rounded up by the Jewish secret police just to fill quotas.

...LTFW?

Evidence?

So who had the better "New Deal", Hitler or FDR?
I know the answer.

FDR, right?