July 3, 2004

OBLIGATORY NAZI COMPARISON OF THE DAY:

REVIEW: of The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans (Doug Brown, Powells.com)

It took an act of terrorism for the Nazis to really take over. On February 27, 1933, an unemployed Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe broke into the Reichstag Building and set it ablaze. While subsequent conspiracy theories have tried to pin the fire on the Nazis, van der Lubbe appears to have been working on his own. But the Nazis saw their chance and took it, beginning with the Reichstag fire decree. Among its provisions, the decree "allowed the police to detain people in protective custody indefinitely and without a court order, in contrast to previous laws and decrees, which had set strict time limits before judicial intervention occurred." Hermann Goering spoke to the Reich cabinet, "claiming that van der Lubbe had been seen with leading Communists...shortly before he entered the Reichstag. The Communists, he said, were not only planning the destruction of public buildings but also the 'poisoning of public kitchens' and the kidnapping of the wives and children of government ministers. Before long, he was claiming to have detailed proof that the Communists were stockpiling explosives." Police were stationed at railway stations and bridges to support the regime's claim that such places were potential terrorist targets. Hitler took advantage of an article in the Weimar constitution which gave him the power to rule in an emergency for an interim period. However, the Nazis used it as the basis for a fictitious permanent state of emergency that lasted until the end of the war.

As a result of the suspension of due process, jails quickly filled with Communists and other suspected terrorists. The Nazis thus created a series of camps for storing the political prisoners, the first in a suburb of Munich called Dachau. These prisons were not very professionally run, and torture was common. The Bavarian state prosecutor unsuccessfully tried to investigate the torturing death of three Dachau prisoners in 1933, and the next year charges were brought against Stormtroopers and police officials running the Hohnstein camp in Saxony. In a quote straight from today's headlines, the Reich Minister of Justice stated the torture of inmates at Hohnstein "reveals a brutality and cruelty in the perpetuators which are totally alien to German sentiment and feeling."

The Coming of the Third Reich is sober reading when compared against current events; the temptation to draw parallels is great. The Nazis never quite won a popular election, and cemented their power base by restricting civil liberties and selling fear to the German people in the wake of a terrorist attack. They held political prisoners without due process and restricted access of humanitarian groups like Red Cross to these prisons.


It almost has to be delusions of grandeur that lead the Left to make such patently asinine assertions, a need to feel that they aren't merely opposing the democratization of the Middle East but are fighting fascism at home.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2004 10:22 AM
Comments

Mr. Judd;

I "disagree":http://blog.thought-mesh.net/archives/001139.html. I think it's more that their policies are so odius that only in comparison to outright facsism do those policies seem like the better choice. To call the Bush administration anything less than the heavy hand of repressive theocracy is to concede the election.

Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at July 3, 2004 10:02 PM
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