245) Day 13 -- Reason #13 to revolt against Predatory Capitalism: "53 days"

Here are “a few” key facts about Hitler.

– A convicted criminal

– Long history of criticizing “the establishment” as corrupt

– Extremely anti-trans, anti-sexual-diversity (literally one of the Nazis’ first acts was to destroy the world’s biggest collection of sexual diversity research and burn the Institute of Sexology.). Chillingly, one of the books that was burned was the Almansor, by Heinrich Heine, in which he wrote, “Where they burn books, in the end they will burn humans too.”

I note this because it was HATE RHETORIC that launched the Nazis into power. Hate against gays and transgender people, hate against communists and socialists, hate against Jews, and this very quickly morphed into hate against any opponent of the Nazi agenda.

This hate rhetoric’s flip-side was pride, pride for the so-called Aryan race, pride to be on the side of God, pride in the strength of the German people.

These two narratives, pride and hate, are flip-sides of the same coin. Which of course, we see abundantly in MAGA today.

– Hitler was a self-professed Christian, although everybody who knew him at a personal level said he was an atheist who used Christianity for pragmatic/political gain.

(Hilariously/horribly, Trump is also a self-professed Christian, although his entire personal life of affairs, lies, and business corruption, is about as un-Christian as you can get. He even SELLS BIBLES, with his autograph on them. Which are, ironically, “made in China.”)

– Hitler vowed to Make Germany Great Again, literally using that exact phrase (although it wasn’t a key slogan; just something he repeated on occasion.)

– Specifically, his promises to the Germany people were to

1) revive the economy,

2) reduce unemployment,

3) increase military spending,

4) withdraw from international treaty obligations,

5) purge the country of foreigners who, he claimed, were ‘poisoning’ the blood of the nation

6)exact revenge on political opponents.

– He also promised, not shitting you at all here, to drain “den parlamentarischen Sumpf” — i.e., to “drain the Swamp” of the government.

– A key part of his economic plan was “Germany-first”, by imposing new, dramatic tariffs on imports, at the time the most important being grain imports.

– He was criminally convicted after a violent coup attempt (the Beer Hall Putsch), which failed to overthrow the government.

* * * * *

And then what happened? The parallels to Trump today, already chilling as fuck, get worse.

– He became Chancellor (looooong story behind how this happened; you can look it up for yourself if interested), appointing two absolute loyalists to key positions, and began to undermine Germany’s democratic institutions. (Later, as his power consolidated, he expanded this, appointing KEY LOYALISTS to positions of power, thereby dismantling institutional resistance against him.)

– Wilhelm Frick was appointed to Minister of the Interior, and was given a mandate to discredit and then ban opposition newspapers that criticized Hitler. Thereby, he centralized control of the media, and otherwise propagandized doubt about the credibility of journalists and the free press.

– Hermann Goring, the other appointee, was given the job of purging Germany’s security forces, stacking the legal/security institutions with loyalists, including passing laws allowing incredible police brutality, including shooting people ON SIGHT, without any accountability.

– Following a disaster (which might have been intentional, it’s impossible to know for sure), the Reichstag fire, Hitler gained powers to imprison his political opponents, arrest opposition journalists, and simply shut down opposition newspapers completely. Civil liberties were suspended, citizens lost rights to resist police searches and seizures, and in effect, a police state was created pretty much overnight, to “maintain order”.

– Next, Hitler issued a decree to pardon any Nazi who committed crimes “in the interest of national renewal”. Including murder and treason. People who committed treason against the Republic, were lauded as national heroes. Within a day, the first concentration camp was opened to “detain” opponents of the State.

– Shortly afterwards, the German Parliament held a vote, “The Enabling Act of 1933”, whether to give Hitler essentially absolute power to reform the government.

Many parliamentary reps expressed disapproval, although most ended up voting in favour of Hitler, as his threats, arrests of opponents, etc., coerced them into voting against their own government.

The one party, the Social Democrats, that voted against this, was at the time, inspiring to the extreme. This had been the generally “leftist” party that grew from Marxist roots in the 1800s, that stood for workers’ rights and focused on building working-class organizations.

To stand against the Enabling Act, their leader, Otto Wells, returned from exile, facing the threat of arrest, just to cast his vote. In his final speech to the Republic, he stated,

“In this historic hour, we German Social Democrats solemnly pledge ourselves to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism.”

He criticized Hitler for undermining the integrity and values of the Republic, and for sowing so much hatred and divisiveness, against the long-held community values of the German people. He then declared that despite Hitler’s agenda, in the end, the Republic’s founding democratic values would remain into the future.

“No Enabling Act gives you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible.”

The final vote was 441-94.

And Hitler had, democratically, destroyed the Weimar Republic and seized complete control. The Social Democrats were, of course, banned from then on and fled into exile.

In other words, using ENTIRELY CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS, one step at a time, Hitler dismantled the German government, and replaced it with his own authoritarian dictatorship.

This process, from Chancellor to Dictator with absolute power, took 53 days.

***53 days***

The speed of these changes is important. Changes happened so fast, so furiously so “impossibly” according to anyone’s expectations at the time, that it was impossible to mount an effective resistance. The democratic institutions were simply overwhelmed, and the German people, so confused by the rapidity of change and the MANY conspiracy theories and rumours and falsehoods and basically crazy shit that was going around, had no idea how to effectively organize, or even if what Hitler was doing was a good idea or not.

Although, as the historian who collated this information, Timothy Ryback, argues, the Third Reich and Hitler’s rise to absolute power BARELY happened. There were many opportunities to stop him, many moments where people decided not to stand up to him, not to resist the early stages of the regime-formation.

I’ll leave it to the interested reader to delve into the details, which Timothy Ryback has unpacked; just look him up. The point being, Hitler’s abrupt rise to power, and the atrocities that followed, were not “inevitable”. The steps he took were not “destiny” or some unstoppable “march of history”.

They were, in fact, incredibly improbable, requiring acquiescence and cowardice multiple times, by the people who could have stopped him. The lessons for today, are abundantly clear.

* * * * *

Joseph Goebbels, who was the Nazi party’s chief propagandist, and later the Reich’s Minister of Propaganda, noted, “The big joke on democracy, is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”

But the counter to Goebbels’ jubilation, is that democracy also gives its supporters the means to stop this destruction. But doing so requires that people step in, step up, and stop it. ESPECIALLY the people who, at the beginning, hold influence over the media, the justice system, the law, and key pillars of government.

Doing so takes incredible courage. Such a person may well be arrested. They may be committing career suicide. But if they don’t step up, then dictators can, astonishingly quickly, gain absolute power.

And with such power, they can do whatever they want.

* * * * *

Which in Hitler’s case, was war. “Purges” of the German people to achieve “racial purity”. And, of course, the Holocaust, the biggest mass murdering atrocity in the history of the world.

After the Holocaust years of hell, as the war was lost, Hitler committed suicide. Then Goebbels murdered his six children through poisoning, and he and his wife also committed suicide. And the vision of democracy became possible again.

But the suffering it took to get there destroyed a nation, demolished much of Europe, murdered 2/3 of all European Jewish people and millions of others the Nazis deemed undesirable, slaughtered many tens of millions of soldiers and citizens through war, and changed the course of history forever.

* * * * *

Now, look at Donald Trump and his rise to power, and his promises, and his rhetoric. And decide for yourself what path we are on, and just how far along it, we are.

***53 days***