Adolf Hitler
Perhaps
~William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~George Santayana (1863–1952),
Never forget that everything Hitler did in
~Martin Luther King, jr.
Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.
But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.
The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.
In the last days of 1932, Hitler was contemplating suicide..... In 1932, they were succeeding. Hitler was facing a crucial election. Members of the Nazi Party were in danger of defecting to other political organizations. His own trusted disciples were dividing the Party into warring factions that could not be controlled And on Halloween night - the pagan Sabbat of Samhain - his mistress Eva Braun shot herself. Although Eva survived what the doctors would later characterize as a serious suicide attempt, Hitler himself knew he was politically dead. It appeared as if he had lost the will to fight, and he began to speak more and more of his own death. He entered the political campaign a distracted, depressed leader who seemed unable to hold his fractious Party together. They lost heavily in the Reichstag five days later - losing seats to the hated Communists - and the press began publishing the Party's obituary. At this nadir of his career, he turned to an old friend whom he had met years earlier, in 1926, in Berlin. This was Erik Jan Hanussen, a famous astrologer and master of several occult disciplines who had - it was said - taught Hitler everything from the body language and gestures to use in public speaking to what friends and associates he should cultivate. The Viennese Hanussen - whose real name was Herschel Steinschneider, the son of a Jewish vaudeville performer - began his career as what Americans call a "carny," doing odd jobs in a travelling circus, until he began his own newspaper and threatened to publish vile things in it about people he knew unless they paid up! This small-time blackmailer soon became interested in hypnosis and mediumship and published several books on the subject, eventually becoming the darling of the international socialite set, a man who never failed to entertain at parties but who also provided more serious assistance to those of his hosts who needed a horoscope drawn up or a spell cast. He dyed his hair blond to fit his new persona as a Danish aristocrat, and dived into the frantic, heady atmosphere of the early 1930's Berlin competing with astrologers, clairvoyants, and mediums of every description. Although he had never cast Hitler's astrological chart before, now in the late days of 1932 with Hitler morose and on the verge of doing himself damage, Hanussen erected his natal and probably a transit or progressed chart and appeared before Hitler with an eerie prognosis. Hanussen told his host that there were good times ahead, but that a few "obstacles" remained that had to be eliminated. The implication was oddly surreal. The "obstacles" were not actual people or circumstances. Instead Hanussen claimed, Hitler was the victim of some sort of hex or magical spell. History has not recorded who might have been responsible for this, and it is possible that all Hanussen knew - or claimed - was that "evil occult influences" were around Hitler, causing him to lose his edge. We may fantasize about a lodge of German magicians, summoning angelic forces to thwart the attempts of Hitler and his Nazi Party to gain power in Germany. We may wonder if a witch or sorcerer - operating alone in some mountain fastness of the Obersalzberg, perhaps - was casting a spell against Hitler for something as relatively trivial as a broken promise or unrequited love, and thereby altering the course of European history forever. We will certainly never know the actual dimensions of this baneful influence around the Führer, but the outcome of Hanussen's meditations was nothing short of spectacular. In order to rid himself of this evil spell, he said, one would have to go to Hitler's hometown. Now a mandrake is the man-shaped root famous throughout European folklore for its occult and medicinal properties. According to some traditions, one had to stop one's ears with cloth or cotton before pulling the root from the earth, as it would emit a piercing scream that would shatter the eardrums. A dog was sometimes used to pull the root from the earth as the magician kept his hands clasped around his own ears. The resulting shriek - it is said - normally killed the dog. The mandrake is also known for its powers as an aphrodisiac, and as an amulet of protection. We must assume that Hanussen was thinking of this last property in connection with Hitler. Also, the significance of the butcher's yard should not be ignored: such a place would have given the surrounding earth the peculiar quality of a veritable Teutonic orgy of blood, dismemberment, death, and pain, which would have a mystically absorbed by the root itself. Hanussen decided to perfrom the necessary rituals himself and set off for Hitler's birthplace in Austria, returning on New Year's Day 1933 with the amuletic root and with a prediction: that Hitler's return to power would begin on January 30, a date roughly equivalent to the pagan Sabat of Oimelc: one of the four "cross-quarter" days of the witches' calendar. It seemed an outrageous prediction but - after a series of bizarred coincidences and half-baked conspiratorial machinations on the part of his opponents - Hitler went from washed-up political has-been to Chancellor of Germany with dizzying speed in thirty days and, on January 30, 1933 he assumed power. Hanussens's impossibly optimistic prediction came true to the day. That was not the end of Hanussen's ability to predict the future, however, for on February 26 of that same year - during a seance held that evening at his own lavishly furnished "Palace of Occultism" on Lietzenburger Strasse and attended by Berlin's movers and shakers - he predicted that the Communists in Germany would attempt a revolution, signaled by the destruction (by fire) of an important government building. The next day, the Reichstag was in flames and Hitler had all the excuse he needed to go from Chancellor of Germany to Fuhrer of the Third Reich. European history had been changed forever, and once more the Society Seer was right on target. But, six weeks later in April of 11933, Hanussen would be dead: murdered in a forest outside Berlin by agent or agents unknown. There was speculation that Hitler ordered the execution since Hanussenn "knew too much" or perhaps might even have had connections to the Communist Party (hence his accurate prediction of the Reichstag fir; some mediums and psychics - Hannussen was no exception - are known to "enhance" their abilities by gathering intelligence on their clients ahead of time or by bugging the rooms in which seances are held, etc. In fairness, however, no amount of dirty tricks could have explained Hanussen's accurate prediction of Hitler's enormous success in January). Another version had it that Hanussen's murder enraged the Führer, and that he ordered the death sentence for its perpetrators, like Karl Ernst, who was executed during the Röhm purge with a bewildered "Heil Hitler" on his lips. Another story, that SA leader Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf had Ernst arrest and murder Hanussen because the count owed him money, is also current. Hanussen was said to have thrown orgies at the count's Wannsee villa, where attractive young ladies - usually "actresses" - were thrown into hypnotic trances and made to mime orgasms. The count was a rather degenerate sort who went through money like Schnapps, and wound up owing a great deal to Hanussen, who carried the count's markers with him wherever he went. Needless to say, the markers were never found (which either proves that the count killed Hanussen and removed the IOU's from the body, or that the story is completely fictitious and never happened; take your pick). And then, of course, Hanussen's father was Jewish, which would have been reason enough to execute the inordinately influential seer. Unfortunately we will never know what happened, for Hannusen died as he had lived: the Count St. Germain of Weimar and early Nazi Germany, a complete and compelling mystery.
Released from prison in 1924 after the Beer Hall Putsch got him a light sentence for what was, after all, high treason, his Mein Kampf a best-seller, and his Nazi Party back and stronger than ever, he nonetheless was losing ground in the Reichstag. Hindenberg - the much-respected and very popular President of the Republic - was not pleased with the rough-and-tumble crowd that seemed to compose Hitler's voting bloc, and various ministers were conspiring against Hitler to keep him out of government altogether.
At the time of the full moon.
At midnight. In a butcher's backyard.
And remove a mandrake from the ground.
Peter Levenda, Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult
In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler, and two minor candidates, Ernst Thälmann and Theodor Düsterberg. The results were:
Hindenburg 49.6 percent
Hitler 30.1 percent
Thälmann 13.2 percent
Düsterberg 6.8 percent
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Josef Göbbels, who would later become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We’re beaten; terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”
Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the runoff results were:
Hindenburg 53.0 percent
Hitler 36.8 percent
Thälmann 10.2 percent
Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively rejected by the German people.
On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new elections, the third legislative election in five months.
Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial law was proclaimed in Berlin.
Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,
In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard his voice by loudspeaker.
Hitler’s rise to power
The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member body.
On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state.
Otto von Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,
Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.
Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.
Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however, Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had been appointed.
On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that proved to be a fairly easy task.
The Reichstag fire
On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Göbbels home when the telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and Göbbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Göring, who would later become Hitler’s air minister. Göring was shouting at the top of his lungs,
This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.
Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down... . Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.
So how was Göring so certain that the fire had been set by communist terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his realizing it.
Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have known throughout history — that during extreme national emergencies, people are most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return for “security.” And that’s exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist crisis.
Suspending civil liberties
The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:
Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.
The judiciary under Hitler
One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer points out:
Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent, subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.
In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists, were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Göring. Within a month, the Nazis had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out,
soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend.
One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Göring during the trial with a severe cross-examination of Göring, did not benefit from his acquittal. Shirer explains:
The German communist leader was immediately taken into “protective custody,” where he remained until his death during the second war.
In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or “insidious attacks against the government.” These courts
consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials. Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they formally withdrew the action.
Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemöller discovered when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom, Niemöller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp.
The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or “protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without charging them with a crime. As Shirer put it,
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished. Hitler’s title became Führer and Reich Chancellor. Not surprisingly, he used the initial four-year “temporary” grant of emergency powers that had been given to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire country.
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TIME Cover: April 14, 1941 |
Accepting the new order
Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete, Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the “temporary” delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of his requests.
For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely.
Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented.
Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, Shirer writes,
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Nazis and Music
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Fascist States of
The guise of deceit from The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of the last century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stood for “Association of Common Interests” and was nothing other than a powerful cartel of corporations, BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolf Hitler. In 1932, with 6 million Germans out of work, the Nazis won more votes than any other party, and in 1933, just as Under the democratic process, which Bush espouses and attempts to force down the throats of the innocent, is the very process by which Adolf Hitler was elected. Adolf Hitler did NOT seize power; he was simply elected. The schema and ideology of the Italian and German fascist system did not go unnoticed by the The seeds of social sickness and corporate domination were planted in the
Liberalism and the Advent of the From what I’ve learned during a lengthy period of research has led me to believe that German Nazism did not evolve as a right wing perversion of capitalism, as “progressive” liberals would have you believe. Instead, Nazism evolved out of the “enlightened” and “progressive” socialist and collectivist ideas of the post World War I era. National Socialism most certainly did not appear on the scene as a perversion of conservatism. Quite the contrary! National Socialism is a direct result of progressive liberalism! National Socialism after all, was socialism. That the Nazis adopted and took to the extreme the dirty little secret of American liberalism, that being eugenics, is soft-pedaled by our modern day “progressives” and conveniently forgotten today. Hitler learned much from American liberals, and they in turn learned much from him! For most of the life span of American and British liberalism, eugenics was a key dogma to which liberals adhered. Liberals were and still are to a great extent, anti-Semitic. They had little use for Jews in the 1920’s and 30’s, and have little use for Jews today. They won’t admit this of course, but the facts speak for themselves. Up until the 1950’s liberal eugenicists were castrating the feeble minded, the racial misfits (make that black Americans) and other “social inferiors.” Webster defines eugenics, “as a science that deals with the improvement of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.” American and British liberals were very much into this science up and to the end of World War II, when Nazi extremes made it impossible for our “progressive” liberals to continue their eugenics dogma. Hitler learned much from American liberals. He put it into practice and created the death camps for Jews and other “inferiors.” “Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.” Who said this? Was it Hitler, or Göbbels? Was it Göring, Hess or Von Ribbentrop? It was Woodrow Wilson, an icon of modern liberals and an idol of many of our State Department’s highest-level officials! When Adolf Hitler was hot and cold with Woodrow Wilson’s ideas. On the one hand, he detested During the 1924 Democrat Convention, the Ku Klux Klan was very much a part of the equation. The Klan was entangled with the “progressive” movement and the 1924 convention was often referred to as the “Klanbake Convention.” I might add that at no time, did the Republican Party ever endorse the KKK. Not so with the Democrats however. Only the Democrats can claim a former KKK Kleagle, that being Robert “Sheets” Byrd of West Virginia, still in the Senate today. The guy that liberals will tell you is the “conscience” of the Senate. Isn’t it interesting, that a Senator can be racist, bigoted or a philanderer and an abuser of women, maybe even a rapist, yet get a “pass” as long as he’s a “liberal” democrat? Abortion has long been a staple of American liberalism and the “progressive” movement. Feminism, the cornerstone of the abortion debate became active in the first half of the 20th Century. Eugenics was also a part of the Feminists movement, and Margaret Sanger, an early day “feminist progressive” and mentor of the vaunted Betty Friedan, a founder of NOW, praised Hitler and his movement for his many “progressive” platforms expressed in the National Socialist movement. Today, there is a general consensus that eugenics is loathsome. Yet 1930’s liberals were soul-mates of Hitler and the Nazi movement. They shared Hitler’s view that Jews were racially inferior people, and our “progressive” liberals opposed efforts to allow German Jews to immigrate at a time when they were being rounded up and murdered by Hitler’s butchers. It was our liberals, our leftists, our “progressives” and feminists who were the Nazis' most vigorous supporters. Feminists pointed at examples such as Hanna Reitsch, Hitler’s favorite test pilot as an example of how modern societies should look to women for science and engineering greatness. It was not our American conservatives. Hitler’s friends in “If we go forward we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good.” Does this sound like a quote from Hitler? Is this a quote from some other Nazi’s speech? Hardly! This is a quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, delivered at his first Inaugural Speech to At the same time, FDR was not one to disappoint racists in his day. General George S. Patton, often vilified by the left, was the first to recognize how ridiculous segregation of the armed forces was. In 1944, while driving by a replacement depot in As it was unheard of to send black soldiers to a white unit, the news of Patton’s orders didn’t take long to reach The progressive movement in the Had Hitler decided not to invade the As Ann Coulter has so eloquently illustrated in her new book, “Godless,” liberalism is a religion. Attacking liberal religious beliefs is to invite vicious, hate-filled counter attacks. Liberalism is about as tolerant of other views as is Islamism. Liberals have proven their “tolerance” for my beliefs and views as evidenced by the tirade of anti-Semitic, hateful and vicious comments I received after writing my last article for NMJ. The truth always is hurtful and hateful to the vast majority of American leftists. This article will open a series of vicious reprisal emails. I’m braced for this already. I haven’t even begun to attack our American leftists’ belief system in regard to the “peaceful nature of Islam.” “Progressives” are not open to debate for the most part, as they know their ideas cannot compete with conservatism. Liberal ideas simply make little sense if any. Most is no more than psychobabble! Our nation is today, suffering the results of years of liberalism and now, political correctness is coming back to haunt us. The Unless we as a nation first define what the enemy is, and who the enemy is, and declare war on our enemies accordingly, we are not likely to achieve victory in this war. If we are to suffer a liberal president following the 2008 Election, it’s unlikely that the For any kind of peace to follow this worldwide confrontation, one side or the other must win. The winning side must insure that an absolute defeat is a result of their efforts. Our Islamic enemies fully understand this very simply concept and are prepared to pursue such a defeat…of the Our enemies are in this for the long haul. There is no expectation in the Islamic World for an end of the war come Friday evening, so that the championship game next weekend goes on as scheduled, with no interruptions for any breaking news events created by some inconvenient war. Sadly, our liberal Democrats and their close allies in the mainstream media continue the “progressive” agenda. Seemingly, that’s support for our enemies and disdain for our allies. Liberals and the MSM have a particular closeness to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other “progressive” organizations that stand firmly against our only true ally in the The ghosts of Hitler, Göbbels, Lenin, Stalin, Arafat, Atta and others are pleased. The stench of modern “progressive” liberalism, combined with her twin sister “anti-Americanism,” is a sweet odor to their “progressive” nostrils. However to me, it’s an odor more foul than the average boulevard in ~Jeffry Pages is a former US State Department Foreign Affairs Officer who spent many years in the . |
