WHEN DEMOCRACY FAILED: THE WARNINGS OF HISTORY
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
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.
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 out 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. 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 Com- pany, 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.
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