Posted on 01/08/2009 9:26:42 AM PST by AJKauf
Many Saw Evil, the posters for the new Tom Cruise film Valkyrie proclaim, But They Dared to Stop It. Or tried, at any rate. The members of what is known in Germany as the July 20th plot failed, of course, to kill Hitler and were unable to seize power. If this slight exaggeration amounts to wishful thinking, however, the suggestion that the would-be assassin, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, and his co-conspirators saw evil in the Nazi regime amounts to an outright distortion of the historical record.
In fact, Stauffenberg served the Nazi regime loyally almost to the very end ...
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
Good post but it will be lost on the emotive souls here..
folks here forget that a police state is very hard on folks who dissent
If you have evidence to the contrary, present it.
I believe that Germany didn't simply become Nazi because of Hitler any more than America is now Democrat because of Odmama.
There were good German people who wanted nothing to do with the Nazi insanity.
By late summer 1944, Wermacht leaders who were already whipped at Kursk on the eastern front were desperate to sue for a less punitive peace than unconditional surrender. That is what was going on here.
Wermacht generals were worried about Soviet occupation....with good reason.
They certainly knew any dream of world dominance was dead and stinking.
There was a book review in the WSj about a new book on the Vichy French, it’s all about the culturally elite French were big German collaborators. They quoted one writer as excusing the collaboration by saying that he would rather be a good German than a dead Frenchman. He was the only writer to be executed for his collaboration.
In the last truly free German election (November, 1932), the Nazis received 33.1% of the total, which was the largest share of any single party, but was actually a poorer showing than they had had in the previous election.
The election of March, 1933, after Hitler's appointment to the chancellorship, was not really free. The leadership of the communist party had been arrested, and the leadership of the social democrat party had left the country. (Those were the Nazis' closest competitors.) The election was "monitored" by SS and SA pollwatchers in much of Germany. Campaigning by parties other than the Nazis was restricted.
Despite this, the Nazis only managed to win 43.9% of the vote -- still not a majority, much less a vast majority.
By July of 1933, all political parties other than the Nazis had either been absorbed by the NSDAP, had voted themselves out of existence, or were legally banned. There were no more elections in Germany until 1949.
It doesn't take a "vast majority of votes" for a democracy to turn into a brutal dictatorship.
Good job reviewing the movie. Much better than the "professionals".
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