Ignore German History at Your Own Peril
Message 18826064
>
>
>
> By Thom Hartmann
> GVNews.Net Crisis Capsule
>
>
> They say that those who do not learn the lessons of
> history are doomed to repeat them. Germans today
> remember the events and the lessons of 70 years ago
> when democracy failed. Will Americans pay heed?
>
>
> NEW YORK, Mar 28, 2003 -- 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
> our 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.
>
>
> -- Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during
> the 1980s; he is the author of over a dozen books,
> including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours
> of Ancient Sunlight."
>
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