_______________________________________________________________ | | http://uscrisis.lege.net/history/ | | | Source: http://commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm | | | Common Dreams News Center Breaking News & Views for the | Progressive Community | | Featured Views | | Published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org | When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History | by Thom Hartmann |   | 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, | and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal | Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This | article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is | granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so | long as this credit is attached. |______________________________________________________________