Since Trump has the nation walking zombie-like into a dictatorship — telling us very clearly what he expects to do if he is re-elected — I decided to re-publish an essay I wrote in August, 2022.
[Also…topic for my next essay: “Does Anyone Expect Trump to Concede Even if He Loses the 2024 Election? If not, then what?”]
Hitler's Path to Power was Cleared by Domestic Terrorists
German President Hindenburg’s body was barely cold (August 2, 1934) when Chancellor Hitler abolished the office of President and declared himself the “Führer of the German Reich.” His unchallenged declaration signaled the end of the Weimer Republic in Germany. And the end of democracy. There was now no authority above Hitler. He became the law. And every member of the German Officer Corps, every individual soldier, all civil servants, including teachers and police, members of parliament and the judiciary, swore an oath of loyalty to him – not to any constitution – but to Hitler himself, the Führer.
“I swear I shall be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people, respect the laws, and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me God.”
Though Germany’s democracy officially crumbled fifteen years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, much of the groundwork for Hitler’s declaring himself Führer had been laid within a few short years of war’s end, and his control of Germany occurred even before he declared himself Führer.
The boiling cauldron of national post-war humiliation, catastrophic economic circumstances, and social upheaval created the recipe for German revolution. Within four years of the signing of the treaty, Hitler and his fledgling National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis), launched a coup – “The Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923. The coup failed, and Hitler received a five-year sentence for “high treason.”
Hitler served less than a year, however, then walked out of prison a more powerful and dangerous political figure than when he walked in. During his incarceration, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf laying out his blueprint for Germany’s future. His demagogic, clear-eyed vision of an antisemitic, illiberal, authoritarian state aroused dispirited Germans seeking quick solutions to their grievances and scapegoats on whom to settle these grievances.
Hitler overcame logistical inconveniences, like law and order, by enlisting a paramilitary organization, the Brownshirts (aka Storm Troopers) to handle the rough stuff, in a calculated program of domestic terrorism. These young men were recruited from the ranks of “violent anti-leftist and anti-democratic former soldiers to lend muscle to the young Nazi party, using them like a private army to intimidate opponents” (Land).
Since speaking at public rallies was dangerous during this time, the Brownshirts acted as Hitler’s security force. But they were also proactive — instigating street clashes, using threats and outright violence to discourage Hitler’s leftist enemies. Their enthusiasm inspired them to march by the thousands in torchlit parades down the boulevards of Berlin. Generally, Hitler relied on them to create chaos in the streets, and operating outside and above the law, they answered only to him (Land).
https://www.efootage.com/videos/88212/storm-troopers-hold-torchlight-parade
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/why-they-parade-by-torchlight/537459/
As in all things regarding Hitler, strict loyalty to him alone was required. The slightest disobedience was punished severely. When Hitler perceived disloyalty among influential leaders in the Brownshirt hierarchy, he had them arrested and executed in what became known as “The Night of Long Knives.” Disloyalty, real or imagined, was unacceptable to Hitler.
While Brownshirt thuggery helped Hitler achieve many of his goals, Hitler opted to “play the democratic game against democracy and win power through the ballot boxes” during the 1932 election. He used democracy to destroy democracy. The aristocratic Hindenburg and Germany’s traditional conservatives could only form a government by including Hitler in their cabinet.
“A third of the electorate gravitated toward Hitler. But it was only a third. And he wouldn't have come to power if it had not been for this powerful elite around the president who said, you've got to pick somebody. Let's pick him. And he thus became the person that the president [Hindenburg] chose to make chancellor.
They believed that they could control Hitler in this way. They called him the drummer, and he was going to head the parade. And the existing elites were going to manipulate him and pass the legislation that they needed” (facinghistory.org).
Sadly, they underestimated “the personality
and ambition of this extraordinary, unpredictable, and violent man, who quickly escaped their control.” Having steamrolled his deluded, cowardly, ineffectual opponents, Hitler grabbed the reins of government and ran wild. After the Reichstag Fire, he began laying the foundation for an authoritarian state well before he declared himself Führer:
· He suspended all fundamental civil rights in Germany and created a “legal” framework for repressing his opponents.
· He created “special courts to judge political opponents.”
· He ordered the building of the first concentration camp (Dachau).
· He reorganized the civil service to weed out Communists and Jews.
· He encouraged the systematic boycotting of Jewish shops.
· He banned trade unions.
· He encouraged Brownshirt riots during which Jews and dissenters were kidnapped, tortured, and killed.
· He sanctioned Joseph Goebbels’ rampage against “un-German” books, sanctioning the burning of 25,000 such books in Berlin’s Opera Square.
· He ordered the sterilization of persons suffering from hereditary diseases, mental illness, “idiocy,” and “anti-social behavior.”
· He designated Heinrich Himmler and Richard Heydrich to consolidate command of the Gestapo and all German political and criminal police forces.
· He ordered the SS to take control of all the concentration camps in Germany.
These outrages were a mere prelude to the Holocaust, all occurring with increasing momentum during the decade before Hitler assumed absolute power as Führer. Few people at the time could have imagined things could get worse. Then they did.
If citizens of the world had learned only one lesson from Hitler’s political career, it should have been that it is dangerous to reject democratic institutions by swearing allegiance to one person – especially one with psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies.
[Berlin after VE Day.]
Bibliography:
(Land, Graham. “The Brownshirt: The role of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Nazi Germany,” History Hit, 28 Sept. 2021).
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; www.uushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938.
Be interesting to see how many citizens leave America if he wins. Hate to be like the German citizen who waited too long.
Bill, Thank you for this. I do not understand why so many people, some of them really decent people,
do not see Trump for the real threat that he is. I don't want to throw my hands up and say that I can't do anything. I don't believe that I can't do anything. I just don't know WHAT TO DO!