CNN - asking the right questions

[xorcist at sigaint.org]

> Zenaan Harkness:
> I'm -pretty- sure we're not descending into 1939,
> but hey, please holler if I'm missing something...

---

How Hitler Became a Dictator
by Jacob G. Hornberger

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 30, 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 Schutzhaft 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 wi

---

Oh snap:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/22/clinton-campaign-looking-into-challenging-outcome-of-election-to-undermine-the-vote/