I keep hearing that the notion of Bundeswehr soldiers patrolling the streets is still an uncrossable line in Germany. And it is troubling to hear the higher-ups in government favoring it so strongly.
In Hitler’s early days in power, it was the Prussian police, not the Reichswehr, that laid the basis for the Nazi dictatorship.
Prussia then was Germany’s largest state, compromising two thirds of the territory of the Reich and more than 60% of the country’s population.
It was made easier by the fact von Papen had ousted the SPD state government from office that ran Prussia without interruption from 1920 to 1932.
I would agree, but then you look at Belgium and France, it’s a routine picture there now. You can go to NY City and see National Guardsmen still patrolling some public infrastructure areas (airports, railway stations, etc).
At the rate things are going, I expect another round of 20,000 policemen added by summer of 2018.