....And a Brief Glimpse of What Would Be Waiting for It
By Steven Jonas
Adolf Hitler, head of the German Nazi party (that
is the party with the mis-leading name, sort of like Trump will make America
great again, when he really means "white" again), was appointed Chancellor (Prime
Minister) of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933. The Nazis, although powerful, were still not the
dominant political party in Germany of the time. In fact, there was no dominant
political party at that time.
In elections to the Reichstag (the German
Parliament) after they became an important national party in the late 1920s,
they regularly ran some somewhere between 32 and 37 percent of the vote (sound
familiar?) But they were loud, and they
had a large private army, the Sturmabteilung (SA), behind them. They also had significant ruling class
support, from the likes of the steel baron Fritz Thyssen (who as readers of my
columns know well raised money for the Nazis abroad from such folks as the US
George Herbert Walker [sound familiar?]).
Germany was in trouble, what with the Depression
and the continuing reparations payments to the Western Powers which had been victorious
in the First World War. It also had a
powerful labor movement and two powerful left-wing poltical parties, the
Communists (KPD) and the Socialists (SPD).
They should have been allied against their common enemy, Hitler and the
Nazis. But for historical reasons dating
back to World War I they weren't. As
well, the KPD was part of the Moscow-based Comintern (Communist International)
whose policies were set from Moscow.
Stalin described the SPD as "Social Fascists." And so, there was no alliance (which
eventually proved fatal --- literally for many Communists and Socialists alike
--- in the next dozen years). And so, facing
increasing unrest from both the Right and the Left, Hindenburg was reluctantly
prevailed upon to appoint Hitler as Chancellor.
Two former right-wing Chancellors, Kurt von Schleicher and Franz von
Papen, thought they could "keep Hitler under control," which influenced
the decision of von Hindenburg ("von" indicated Prussian nobility), who
was very reluctant
to appoint the Austrian "Little Corporal" to the post. Once in power,
Hitler started using it with a
vengeance, beginning with locking up Communists on the night of his
accession
to the post. Neither von Schleicher nor
von Papen were successful. The former actively
tried to control his worst excesses, then get him deposed. He was killed on June 30, 1934, "The Night of
the Long Knives." Von Papen,
simply marginalized by Hitler, survived the war, but escaped any meaningful
judgment/punishment after it. Which brings us to our time, and what is
almost certain to happen should Trump win re-election in 2020.
Click here for the full article.
Source: OpEdNews.com
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