How Hitler Became a Dictator

[peapod]

Like I say I am just a lumberjack, most of you are more knowledgeable and probally more educated than myself. Your points are interesting and I and my cabinet of yaks will think on them. I don't know about one of those darn yaks tho, he use to work for the ministry of truth over in Oceania.

 

[Haggis McBagpipe]

I don't know about one of those darn yaks tho, he use to work for the ministry of truth over in Oceania.

Hey, Pea, your yaks are fiddling with the 'submit' button.

 

[researchok]

Haggis, you said:

I think, though, that comparisons to Hitler are natural enough, given the political climate south of the border. It isn't just Bush, it is the whole American attitude these days, they are on a hair-trigger - they're ready to champion a cause, they're wanting to champion a cause, they're needing to champion a cause.

Exactly how is that different from your politics-- or mine-- or anyone elses?

Further, what exactly has this US administration done that is so Hiteresque?

Rhetoric is one thing- but it can go too far.

 

[Haggis McBagpipe]

Research: Too far? Sure. Emotions are running high, it is election time. Comparisons of Bush to Hitler are as natural as the other side making their suggestions that a vote for Kerry means you are for the terrorists., that you don't love your country, etc..

It IS all rhetoric, and of course it goes too far.

As to how the attitude stateside is different from here? You are in denial if you can honestly say that there is not something disturbing about the way Americans have been. To put a finger on exactly what it is, is damned hard, but having lived stateside, I can tell you this, Americans are different now, and they are looking for a leader they can blindly follow without question.

Canadians are simply not like that. They really aren't. They're kind of jaded about leaders, and blind following - even in the days of Trudeau - does not happen to any significant degree.

 

[researchok]

Well, were on the same page.

The rhetoric is out of control, as far as Im concerned. It does not benefit the electorate- no matter who goes overboard.

I do agree Americans are more likely to blindly follow-- but they are also quick to air their dirty laundry-- moreso than others.

 

[peapod]

hag don't argue with the guy, he is looking for matches! By the way you old hag very cute on the "submit" poke, is there anything I write down that you can't figure out :? Be careful I will sic winston on you.

 

[Haggis McBagpipe]

Well, were on the same page.

The rhetoric is out of control, as far as Im concerned. It does not benefit the electorate- no matter who goes overboard.

I do agree Americans are more likely to blindly follow-- but they are also quick to air their dirty laundry-- moreso than others.

Yes, we are on the same page, I think. Sure, such rhetoric doesn't benefit anybody, but it is the nature of the beast. I don't actually think it hurts anybody, either, strangely enough. In a very strange way, I would say it is better to have passions running high, rhetoric and all, than to have indifference.

As to Americans airing their dirty laundry, yes I suppose they do more than we do, but it is more of a Puritan angst thing, ie it still bugs them that Clinton had sex with Monica, and Cheney bugs them for having said naughty words. Bush, on the other hand, is faithful to his wife (apparently) and clean-as-a-whistle morally speaking, so all his other crimes (like sending American boys to die for naught) go uncriticized by the angsting Puritans. I think, on the whole, the dirty laundry aired serves more as a titillating adventure for Americans grown bored with life than any serious self-reflection.

 

[researchok]

I disagree somewhat-- I do think it hurts.

I do believe that the office- and thus the office holder-- merit a certain respect.

In our democracies, there is an orderly transfer of power-- an extraordinary event. Even in dispute, there is a mechanism to mediate the dispute.

There comes a point where, because of our 'higher' committmenst, we accept that mecahnism as serving the greater good.

Of course, I'm referring to 2000-- and the fact that after Bush-- this year or in 4 years-- there will once again be an orderly transfer of power. That will be repeated in democracies world over.

The level of rhetoric we hear- from all sides (make no mistake, this was started by the republicans under Clinton (corrected by edit), brought to new heights by the dems)- can and does serve to belittle the the system and mechanism. The very notion that somehow one side or the other is in toto morally endowed by their beliefs, is outrageous. It is sheer hubris.

I am reminded that the greatest of leaders have certain qualities in common.

They are humble, they are modest. They fight fiercely for their beliefs and yet are giving and forgiving. Whether it was Rene Levesque-- who many feared but none 'feared' because he believed in a Quebec for all Quebecois (how I wish he were still here!) or PET, who was imperious, but not imperious enough to spend hours with the poor and the disenfranchised, out of camera range, to listen and learn, or Ronald Reagan, who many despised-- yet wrote letters to his wife and strangers-- rich and poor-- for years-- gave us an insight into a decent man.

All those men- and others-- never labeled opponents as is done now. They fought bitterly for their beliefs-- but never resorted to the name calling and the visceral hatred we see today. They never stood by when those things were done in their name.

Jean Chretien was and is, an example of that kind of attack and an example of the well deserved repulsion towards those that 'crossed the line' when he was attacked.

The rhetoric we see today does indeed hurt the system. Fortunately, the purveyors of this garbage are usually ill equipped to actually argue facts and reality, and have no influence among people who do make decisions. The moral malaise they- of whatever poliical stripe-- spread however, depresses a society, rather than uplifts it.

We have seen that rhetoric before and when left unchecked, where it went and what became of it, in the last century.

Time to look in the mirror, folks-- all of us.

 

[Haggis McBagpipe]

Well put, Research. The essence of what you have said is true, and so well put that I see no reason to add a single word or attempt to detract in any way from a valuable message.

 

[peapod]

My yaks have a question, if bush is just like hitler, how come nobody said Johnston and Nixon were like hitler? These 2 men sent hundred of thousands of american boys to die, to a place many felt was none of their business. Was it power and spring rolls?
I heard Mr. Bush is saying John Kerry is just like hitler at his website now....this stuff is catchy.

 

[researchok]

And therein lies the problem.

Politics as most tings is a game of one upsmanship.

 

[peapod]

All jestering aside, I would like somebody to give me their point of view. Why were not johnston and nixon not called hitler? It is a honest question I am asking. I looked around I could not find any comparsion in the written. Is there some out there, as anyone seen it?
Would not the people of that generation who had first hand experience with hitler and lived in those times have been the ones to see the these two men were like hitler. They sent alot more boys to a war that was not their business according to their nation than bush ever did. So why did not that generation not say nixon and johnston are just like hitler. Maybe they knew what hitler was all about first hand and knew the difference. This generation calls bush just like hitler. It does not make much sense to me. Now bush has called kerry just like hitler..as hitler become the new bootylicious of this generation.

 

[Haggis McBagpipe]

I think the thing that has brought Hitler to mind in association with Bush is the very real fear that many people have over what is happening in the United States.

The US is not A world power, it is THE world power. It can do any damn thing it wants, and there is NOBODY to stop it. The US AND the world needs the US to have a good, strong and fair president, now more than any other time in history. The President of the United States affects every citizen of the world far more than our own leaders do, and this is unusual in history.

As a result, it matters a very great deal, and people care a very great deal what happens in the US at election time. I think the people of the world feel highly vulnerable in the face of it, they feel threatened by the enormous power held by this one single man, a man who is not a particularly good or wise man. I think it is very, very natural to vilify something that frightens us so much.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Vancouver Independent Media Centre
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Original article is at http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/146410.php
How Hitler Became a Dictator
by brian • Wednesday June 30, 2004 at 06:25 PM


the correspondances with present day events are uncanny

How Hitler Became a Dictator
by Jacob G. Hornberger, Posted June 28, 2004


Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.

In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler, and two minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were:

Hindenburg 49.6 percent
Hitler 30.1 percent
Thaelmann 13.2 percent
Duesterberg 6.8 percent

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We’re beaten; terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”

Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the runoff results were:

Hindenburg 53.0 percent
Hitler 36.8 percent
Thaelmann 10.2 percent


Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively rejected by the German people.

On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new elections, the third legislative election in five months.

Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial law was proclaimed in Berlin.

Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,

In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard his voice by loudspeaker.

Hitler’s rise to power


The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member body.

On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state. Otto von Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,

Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.
Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.

Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however, Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had been appointed.

On January 10, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that proved to be a fairly easy task.


The Reichstag fire

On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would later become Hitler’s air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his lungs,

This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.
The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found communist publications stating,

Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down... . Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.
So how was Goering so certain that the fire had been set by communist terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have known throughout history — that during extreme national emergencies, people are most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return for “security.” And that’s exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist crisis.


Suspending civil liberties

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.


The judiciary under Hitler

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer points out,

Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent, subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.
In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists, were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Goering. Within a month, the Nazis had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out,

soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend.
One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Goering during the trial with a severe cross-examination of Goering, did not benefit from his acquittal. Shirer explains:

The German communist leader was immediately taken into “protective custody,” where he remained until his death during the second war.
In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or “insidious attacks against the government.” These courts

consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials. Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they formally withdrew the action.
Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom, Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp.

The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schultzhaft or “protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without charging them with a crime. As Shirer put it,

Protective custody did not protect a man from possible harm, as it did in more civilized countries. It punished him by putting him behind barbed wire.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished. Hitler’s title became Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. Not surprisingly, he used the initial four-year “temporary” grant of emergency powers that had been given to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire country.


Accepting the new order

Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete, Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the “temporary” delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of his requests.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely.

Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, Shirer writes,

The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.


Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

All true but Trumps case is totally different in every way possible.

 

[pgs]

All true but Trumps case is totally different in every way possible.

You are resurrecting a thread from 2004 .