I thought this was well written, so I'm going to post it in its entirety.
When Democracy Failed in Nazi Germany: The Warning of History
03/17/03
By: Thom Hartmann
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was
barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered
well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They
commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace
that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic
crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign
ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but
the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The
intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would
eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not
rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the
most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest
levels,
in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed
to
be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and
the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he
coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man
who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the
intellect
to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and
internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his
political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and
often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats,
foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and
media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an
occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved
skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he
didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his
response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most
prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist
who
had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press
conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history,"
he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building,
surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice
trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion -
"a
sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on
terrorism
and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their
origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds
in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built
in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous
terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag
was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window
display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular
leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating
terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that
suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and
habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones;
suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges
and
without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's
homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State"
passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil
libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if
the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by
then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and
the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later
say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal
police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious
persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the
first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected
were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to
offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity
ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there
were
many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered
police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones
safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the
meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking,
learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions.
He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the
suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure
word
into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his
countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he
began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted
in
the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's
famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's
hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them
mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought:
all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he
suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs
fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it
makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with
the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any
international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best
interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus
withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933,
and
then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony
Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling
elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people
that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were
rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of
the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New
Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt
buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of
them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader
determined
that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation
were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated
administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing
the
nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern
ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and
various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a
single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland,
consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent
police,
border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this
new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave
it
a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the
terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those
voices
questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising
questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the
public's recollection as his central security office began
advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about
suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names
of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio
stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and
celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime
and
the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by
corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't
enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing
former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high
government positions. A flood of government money poured into
corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern
ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for
wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to
acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the
nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of
Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry;
one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to
build
the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state.
Soon
more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack,
voices
of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students
had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White
Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out
against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to
direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his
own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to
power,
and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people
being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys
or
family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he
began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small,
limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the
suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection
with
the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building
was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if
they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He
called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the
leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He
claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and
nations
across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that
it
was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide
empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying
with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader
of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military
action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous
British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike
doctrine would bring "peace for our time."
Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of
popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian
government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to
Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian
resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler
said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria
with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop
lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love
from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into
Austria]
there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not
as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of
his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press
began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and
the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to
ensure
that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded
in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they
said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-
in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates
in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of
his
policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him
were
labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested
they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the
patriotic
necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was
one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-
earning
people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals
and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was
successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of
opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily
release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist
cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress
dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention
from
the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing
dissidents;
violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic
of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the
corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation
was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the
name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first
experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones
worth remembering. February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of
Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of
the
German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that
catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German
constitution.
By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in
which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved
and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the
world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland,
known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply
by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly
violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which,
while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly
desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to
the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the
National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of
government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close
alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of
using
war as a tool to keep power: fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of
government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business leadership,
together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to
remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and
the
United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and
Roosevelt
chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power
and
prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and
reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the
commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and
create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-
expanding
war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class,
enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations,
increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals,
created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort
through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts,
and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is
again ours.
