Nazi Germany - Dictatorship (within 24 hrs after fire, no press, assembly or speaking out)

One week before the election was due to take place, the Reichstag building burned down.

Hitler immediately declared that it was the signal for a communist takeover of the nation.

Hitler knew that if he was to convince President Hindenburg to give him emergency powers - as stated in the Weimar Constitution - he had to play on the old president's fear of communism. What better than to convince him that the communists were about to take over the nation by force?

A known communist - Marianus van der Lubbe - was caught near the Reichstag building immediately after the fire had started. Those that arrested him - Nazi officials - claimed that Lubbe confessed to them that the fire was a signal to other communists to start the revolution to overthrow democracy in the country.

Matches were allegedly found on van der Lubbe and those who arrested him claimed that he smelt of petrol.

Hitler asked Hindenburg to grant him emergency powers in view of the 'communist takeover'.

Using the constitution, Hindenburg agreed to pass the Law for the Protection of the People and the State.

a ban on the Communists and Socialists taking part in an election campaign. The leaders from both parties were arrested and their newspapers were shut down.

To 'keep the peace' and maintain law and order, the SA (the Brown Shirts) roamed the streets beating up those who openly opposed Hitler.

The election took place in March - though Hitler was convinced it would be the last. Hitler did not get the number of votes he wanted but he did get enough to get over a 50% majority in the Reichstag:

Communists 4.8 million votes Social Democrats 7.2 million votes Centre party 5.5 million votes Nationalists 3.1 million votes Other parties 1.4 million votes Nazis 17.3 million votes

That 12 million people voted for what were effectively two outlawed parties is remarkable when the intimidation of voters is taken into account.

The Kroll Opera House in Berlin was chosen. This was a relatively small round building - perfect for meetings. On March 23rd, elected officials were due to meet to discuss and vote on Hitler's Enabling Law.

As politicians neared the building, they found it surrounded by SS and SA thugs who tried to ensure that only Nazi or Nationalist politicians got into the building.

The vote for this law was crucial as it gave Hitler a vast amount of power. The law basically stated that any bill only needed Hitler's signature and within 24 hours that bill would become law in Germany.

With only Nazis and other right wing politicians inside the Kroll Opera House, the bill was quickly passed into law. The act gave Hitler what he wanted - dictatorial power.

What he wanted would become law in Germany within 24 hours of his signature being put on paper.

On 7th April 1933, Nazi officials were put in charge of all local government in the provinces.

On May 2nd 1933, trades unions were abolished, their funds taken and their leaders put in prison. The workers were given a May Day holiday in return.

On July 14th 1933, a law was passed making it illegal to form a new political party. It also made the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany.

Germany became a nation of snoops. People were employed in each street, in each building complex etc. with the sole purpose of keeping an eye on others in their 'area' and reporting them to the authorities if they believed that something was amiss.

The reputation of the Nazi police and the secret police lead by Himmler was such that no-one wished to cause offence.

People kept their thoughts to themselves unless they wished to invite trouble. In this sense, Nazi Germany was a nation run on fear of the government. Hitler had created a one party state within months of being appointed chancellor.

His only remaining problem from his point of view was loyalty within his own party ranks. In June 1934, he overcame this with the Night of the Long Knives.

Now on History Channel, they're showing The Rise of the Third Reich and The Fall of the Third Reich.

2:00 PM -Third Reich: The Rise

Third Reich: The Rise

A unique perspective on the rise of Nazi Germany and how millions of people were so vulnerable to fascism, told through rare and never-before-seen amateur films shot by the Germans who were there.

4:00 PM - Third Reich: The Fall

Third Reich: The Fall

How did the Germans experience the Allied victory in WWII? Rarely-and never-before-seen amateur films recount the catastrophic downfall of the Third Reich through the eyes of the people who lived it: the Germans themselves.

~~~~~~~

Of course, we know the history well, but now so many elements in our world today seem to be calling us to NOT forget what can happen when an apathetic public allows their freedom to be subtlely and deviously overtaken by the force of a massive evil. Lord, bring forth courageous patriots, have mercy on us.

On August 9, 1932, the government decreed the death penalty for those convicted of ‘political’ murder. The next night a band of Nazis invaded the home of a Communist worker in the Silesian village of Potempa and stomped him to death, kicking his larynx to pieces. When the killer s were arrested, tried, and sentenced in accordance with the new law, Hitler responded with threats and demonstrations. On Sept. 2, the government gave its answer: the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The killers were freed by Hitler next year.

The civilized men in the country did not know what to do. In the words of one historian, the moderates voiced desperate "appeals to reason… [But] their techniques were distinctly out of tune with the wild emotionalism that seemed to have gripped a large part of the nation" The civility cherished by the civilized men had finally been defeated by their ideas, although they did not know that this was the cause.

After years of preaching contradictions and of evading principles with an anti-ideological shrug, these men were astonished to see the nation conclude that man cannot live by principles, that reason is no guide to action, and that anything goes. After years of institutionalizing interest-group warfare, which they had justified as sacrifice or collective service, these men were astonished to see hostile gangs take to the streets and demand one another’s sacrifice. After years of undercutting the mind by preaching the primacy of gentle feeling (whether ‘progressive’, religious, or skeptical), these men were astonished to find that they had nothing more to say, and that there was no one left to listen. The moderates were helpless. The authorities were helpless. The killers were taking over.

On January 30, 1933, after due attention to every requirement of German law and of the Weimar Constitution, Nazi rule was made official… It took six months for the Chancellor to transform the country into a totalitarian state."

Leonard Peikoff - The Ominous Parallels

The Holocaust

Some historians are of the view that Hitler had in mind the mass killing of all the European Jews from the earliest times.

This “Intentionalist” school of thought is now a minority perspective, though not without adherents.

One clear piece of evidence comes from Josef Hell, a retired Major active as a journalist in the 1920s, who interviewed Hitler in 1922 [”Aufzeichnung,” 1922, ZS 640, p. 5, Institut Zeitgeschichte. Der Gerade Weg.]

Hitler said “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit.

As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.”

But Hitler never left a written order (”Fuehrerbefehl”) pertaining to this question.

Another view, called the “Functionalist” position, suggests that Hitler’s initial plan was perform what would later be called “ethnic cleansing”, embarking on the total annihilation of the Jews only after deportations had failed.

In this view the Nazi’s Jewish policy emerged after a series of failures in getting Jews out of Europe, rather than as a premeditated plan.

By the time of the Wannsee directives of January 1942, large numbers of Jews had already been killed in various ways. These formal directives for the Final Solution were more a matter of providing definition and clarity for a program that was already under way.

The “Intentionalist” and “Functionalist” dichotomy is overly simplictic, and neither excludes the other. The “Intentionalists” are probably correct that Hitler appears from the outset to have sought the physical extirpation of the Jews, though without having clearly thought out how this might best be accomplished.

The “Functionalists” are probably correct that the German state apparatus only arrived at the final solution once a variety of other schemes had been found wanting.

On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938 gangs of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods throughout Germany and parts of Austria breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting.

In all 101 synagogues were destroyed and

almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed.

26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 Jews died. This event became known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass.

On 12 November 1938, Hermann Goering called a meeting of the top Nazi leadership to assess the damage done during Kristallnacht and place responsibility for it. It was decided that, since Jews were to blame for these events, they be held legally and financially responsible for the damages incurred by the pogrom.

Kristallnacht turned out to be a crucial turning point in German policy regarding the Jews and may be considered as the actual beginning of what is now called the Holocaust. In the meeting, Goering announced, “I have received a letter written on the Fuehrer’s orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another.”

The path to the Final Solution had been chosen, to remove Jews from the German economy. And all the bureaucratic mechanisms for its implementation were now in place.

On July 31, 1941 SS Obergruppenf Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reichssichterheitshauptamt (RSHA), the main police authority in Hitler’s Reich, secured a ten-minute interview with Reichsmarschall Hermann, who was head of the Four Year Plan, and obtained his signature on a Vollmacht (authority) empowering Heydrich to draw up arrangements for a solution to the Jewish Problem.

“As a complement of the task which was assigned to you by the decree of 24/1/1939, in other words to obtain the most advantageous solution possible to the Jewish question by way of emigration and evacuation given the circumstances, I charge you by the present letter to proceed with all the necessary preparations... to reach an overall solution (Gesamtlesung) of the Jewish question in the zone of German influence in Europe...

I charge you with the rapid submission of an overall project (Gesamtentwurf) bearing on the measures of organization and the material and concrete dispositions to realize the final solution of the Jewish question to which we aspire. (Endlosung der Judenfrage.)”

Endlosung is frequently translated as “final solution” but might also be translated as “overall solution”, “complete solution” or “total solution”

In a memo which circulated in March 1942 in Heydrich’s office, the ministers were informed that the Jews of Europe were to be concentrated in the East, “while awaiting to be sent to a distant territory like Madagascar after the war, which will become their homeland... “

Final solution to the Jewish problem was one of those conventional phrases used to designate the Hitlerian plan to exterminate the European Jews.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/ww2/holocaust.htm

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