#1933 German elections

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden, February 20th 1939

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 21, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 22, 2024

On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “a fascist to the core…the most dangerous person to this country.” 

On October 14, Trump told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that he thought enemies within the United States were more dangerous than foreign adversaries and that he thought the military should stop those “radical left lunatics” on Election Day. Since then, he has been talking a lot about “the enemy from within,” specifically naming Representative Adam Schiff and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats from California, as “bad people.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee that broke the 2019 story of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s first impeachment. 

Trump’s references to the “enemy from within” have become so frequent that former White House press secretary turned political analyst Jen Psaki has called them his closing argument for the 2024 election, and she warned that his construction of those who oppose him as “enemies” might sweep in virtually anyone he feels is a threat.

In a searing article today, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer of The Cycle explored exactly what that means in a piece titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and the three months he took to dismantle that constitution.

By March, she notes,  the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it.

Bitecofer writes that Trump has promised mass deportations “that he cannot deliver unless he violates both the Constitution and federal law.” To enable that policy, Trump will need to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into office those loyal to him rather than the Constitution. And then he will purge his political opponents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wishes against immigrants, for example, and others.

Ninety years ago, as American reporter Dorothy Thompson ate breakfast at her hotel in Berlin on August 25, 1934, a young man from Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, “politely handed me a letter and requested a signed receipt.” She thought nothing of it, she said, “But what a surprise was in store for me!” The letter informed her that, “in light of your numerous anti-German publications,” she was being expelled from Germany.

She was the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany, and that expulsion was no small thing. Thompson had moved to London in 1920 to become a foreign correspondent and began to spend time in Berlin. In 1924 she moved to the city to head the Central European Bureau for the New York Evening Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. From there, she reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler. She left her Berlin post in 1928 to marry novelist Sinclair Lewis, and the two settled in Vermont.

When the couple traveled to Sweden in 1930 for Lewis to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature, Thompson visited Germany, where she saw the growing strength of the fascists and the apparent inability of the Nazi’s opponents to come together to stand against them. She continued to visit the country in the following years, reporting on the rise of fascism there, and elsewhere. 

In 1931, Thompson interviewed Hitler and declared that, rather than “the future dictator of Germany” she had expected to meet, he was a man of “startling insignificance.” She asked him if he would “abolish the constitution of the German Republic.” He answered: “I will get into power legally” and, once in power, abolish the parliament and the constitution and “found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.” She did not believe he could succeed: “Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights,” she wrote in apparent astonishment.

Thompson was back in Berlin in summer 1934 as a representative of the Saturday Evening Post when she received the news that she had 24 hours to leave the country. The other foreign correspondents in Berlin saw her off at the railway station with “great sheaves of American Beauty roses.” 

Safely in Paris, Thompson mused that in her first years in Germany she had gotten to know many of the officials of the German republic, and that when she had left to marry Lewis, they offered “many expressions of friendship and gratitude.” But times had changed. “I thought of them sadly as my train pulled out,” she said, “carrying me away from Berlin. Some of those officials still are in the service of the German Government, some of them are émigrés and some of them are dead.” 

Thompson came home to a nation where many of the same dark impulses were simmering, her fame after her expulsion from Germany following her. She lectured against fascism across the country in 1935, then began a radio program that reached tens of millions of listeners. Hired in 1936 to write a regular column three days a week for the New York Herald Tribune, she became a leading voice in print, too, warning that what was happening in Germany could also happen in America. 

In an echo of Lewis’s bestselling 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, she wrote in a 1937 column: “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance…. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned…. But when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” 

In less than two years, the circulation of her column had grown to reach between seven and eight million people. In 1939 a reporter wrote: “She is read, believed and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands, who got them from [political commentator] Walter Lippmann.” The reporter likened Thompson to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, saying they were the two “most influential women in the U.S.”

When 22,000 American Nazis held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in honor of President George Washington’s birthday on February 20, 1939, Thompson sat in the front row of the press box, where she laughed loudly during the speeches and yelled “Bunk!” at the stage, illustrating that she would not be muzzled by Nazis. After being escorted out, she returned to her seat, where stormtroopers surrounded her. She later told a reporter: “I was amazed to see a duplicate of what I saw seven years ago in Germany. Tonight I listened to words taken out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler.” 

Two years later, In 1941, Thompson returned to the issue she had raised when she mused about those government officials who had gone from thanking her to expelling her. In a piece for Harper’s Magazine titled “Who Goes Nazi?” she wrote: “It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi,” she wrote. “By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.”

Examining a number of types of Americans, she wrote that the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so completely in the promise of American democracy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easygoing to join a struggle. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”

In Paris following her expulsion from Berlin, Thompson told a reporter for the Associated Press that the reason she had been attacked was the same reason that Hitler’s power was growing. “Chancellor Hitler is no longer a man, he is a religion,” she said.

Suggesting her expulsion was because of her old article disparaging Hitler, in her own article about her expulsion she noted: “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people…. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen….” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mapsontheweb]

Map of the German federal elections of 1933

[misfitwashere]

How to Stop Fascism

Five Lessons of the Nazi Takeover

Timothy Snyder

Jul 05, 2024

As the United States hovers at the edge of fascism, the history of Germany can help.

To be sure, Americans have other histories to ponder, including their own.  Some American states, right now, are laboratories of authoritarian rule (and resistance).  The American 1860s and American 1930s reveal tactics authoritarians use, as well as the weaknesses of the American system, such as slavery and its legacy. At those times, though, Americans were lucky in their leadership.  Lincoln and Roosevelt were in office at the critical moments.  And so we lack the experience of the collapse of the republic.

We can certainly learn from contemporary authoritarian success, as in Russia and in Hungary, which I have written about elsewhere.  Yet the classic example of a major economic and cultural power collapsing into fascism remains Germany in 1933. The failure of the democratic experiment in Germany led to a world war as well as the Holocaust and other atrocities.

Yet today a taboo hovers around anything concerning Hitler.  As soon as the collapse of the German republic in 1933 is evoked, American voices commence a fake lament — America is uniquely good so nothing about Nazis can ever apply, and/or Hitler was uniquely evil and so nothing concerning him is relevant.

To be sure, every person and every event is in some sense unique.  But history is precisely the interaction of individuals and situations which, seen in isolation, will appear unique.  The taboo on fascist history shoves people back to a turbulent present, leaving them feeling more helpless. It is an element of the fascist takeover.

The lessons from Germany that I present below are not at all new.  We have been trained by digital media to believe that only what happens right now matters.  But the people who intend to destroy the American constitutional republic have learned from the past.  One of the basic elements of Project 2025, for example, is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung: transforming the civil service into a fascist nest.

Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past.  A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933.

1.  Voting matters.  Hitler came to power after an election which enabled his appointment as head of government.  It is much easier for fascists to begin from within than to begin from without.  Hitler’s earlier coup attempt failed.  But once he had legitimate power, inside the system as chancellor (prime minister), he could manipulate it from within.  In the American system, “voting” means not just going to the polls yourself, but making donations, phone-banking, and knocking on doors.  We are still, happily, at the stage when unglamorous actions can make the difference.

2.  Coalitions are necessary.  In 1932, in the crucial German election, the far left and the center left were separated.  The reasons for this were very specific: Stalin ordered the German communists to oppose the German social democrats, thereby helping Hitler to power.  To be sure, the American political spectrum is very different, as are the times.  Yet the general lesson does suggest itself: the left has to hold together with the the center-left, and their energies have to be directed at the goal rather than at each other.

3.  Conservatives should be conservative.  Which way the center-right turns can be decisive.  In Germany in 1932, conservatives enabled the counter-revolution.  They did not see Hitler and his Nazis as something different from themselves.  They imagined, somehow, that Hitler would preserve the system rather revolutionize it.  They were wrong, and some of them paid for the mistake with their lives.  As in American today, the German “old right” was less numerous than the “new right,” the fascists.  But how the traditionalist center-right acts can very well make the difference.

4.  Big business should support democracy.  In the Germany of the 1930s, business leaders were not necessarily enthusiastic about Hitler as a person.  But they associated democracy with labor unions and wanted to break them.  Seeing Hitler as an instrument of their own profit, business leaders enabled the Nazi regime.  This was, in the end, very bad for business.  Although the circumstances today are different, the general lesson is the same: whether they like it or not, business leaders bear responsibility for whether a republic endures or is destroyed.

5.  Citizens should not obey in advance.  Much of fascism is a bluff — look at our loyal cult, listen to our outrageous language, heed our threats of violence, we are inevitable!  Hitler was good at that sort of propaganda.  Yet to gain power he needed luck and the errors of others.  American fascism, likewise, is far from inevitable.  It too is largely bluff, most of it digital.  The internet is much more fascist than real life, which is discouraging.  But we vote in the real world.  The crucial thing is the individual decision to act, along with others, for four months, a little something each day, regardless of the atmospherics and the polls and the media and the moods.

It’s simple: recalling history, we act in the present, for a future that can and will be much better.

[whencyclopedia]

Reichstag Fire

The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 was a possible arson attack on the German parliament building. The fire was blamed on a communist anarchist Marinus van der Lubbe (1909-1934), but it may have been the work of the Nazi party's paramilitary group the Sturmabteilung (SA) to discredit the left-wing parties before the forthcoming general election.

The chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) used the fire as an excuse to declare martial law and issue a decree that gave the police new powers of arrest and imposed significant limitations on people's civil liberties. The decree was shortly followed by the Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler to bypass the parliament and so establish the Nazi totalitarian regime.

The Nazi Party in Power

In the election of November 1932, the Nazi party (NSDAP), although performing less well than in the election of the previous July, had still won enough seats to convince President Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) that the best candidate to form a coalition government and be appointed chancellor was Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Nazi leader. Hitler's vice chancellor was the conservative politician of the Catholic Centre Party and former chancellor Franz von Papen (1879-1969). The minister of the interior was the Nazi Wilhelm Frick (1877-1946). The minister without portfolio was the Nazi Hermann Göring (1893-1946). Both Papen and Hindenburg were wary of Hitler but thought they could control him better if he was inside the government rather than outside it.

The consequences of the 1932 election resulted, then, in a great step forward for Hitler's plans for total power, but the Nazi party had not won a majority of seats, and so the political situation remained unstable. Hitler had no intention of sharing power and so was not content with the number of non-Nazi ministers in his government. On 1 February, yet another election was called for March 1933. Göring used the police to round up left-wing activists. The Nazi party's paramilitary wing, the SA, conducted a campaign of intimidation towards rival political parties. Something more was needed, though, to guarantee the Nazis would win a majority in parliament. The Reichstag fire produced the perfect propaganda opportunity.

Adolf Hitler in SA Uniform

Imperial War Museums (CC BY-NC-SA)

Continue reading...

[qqueenofhades]

I'm not sure if you can answer this, but what is it that (in general, not just based on the current state of affairs) seems to cause people in more left leaning circles to constantly underestimate the danger that the far right poses?

Like, this seems to be a consistent pattern, given what I've read up on men like Ernst Thalmann and the like, who keep on treating the right wing as being less of a threat than the center or not as left as the left. For that matter, why do they keep insisting that the center is worse than the right, even when it's pretty evidently not the case?

My quasi-educated guess would be that it's because of something called "the psychology of small differences." See where people who live next door to each other, in the same neighborhood, or in the same country (or in countries right next to each other) hate each other far more than unknown people far away, because these people are almost like them but then aren't, and that's a threat to their identity and their sense of themselves. Hence we have leftists insisting that liberals or even centrists are somehow Much Worse!!! than literal far-right fascists, even if it makes no sense, because it doesn't have to do with logic, reality, or an objective appraisal of the situation, but a threat to their personal sense of themselves and/or selfish view of themselves as clearly the best and most moral ever. As such, something something people who almost agree with them, but not quite, are actually worse than their open enemies.

Also, I'm glad you mentioned Ernst Thalmann. People should read up on him. He was the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925-33, and played an explicit part in aligning them with Stalinist Russia and vigorously demonizing the liberal/left-wing establishment German political party, the Social Democrats, as "social fascists" who were obviously worse than the boorish failed artist Austrian populist guy running for the National Socialist Workers' Party:

....except the National Socialist Workers' Party was, you know, the Nazis, the guy running for them was Adolf Hitler, Thalmann spent so much time attacking the Social Democrats as "just as bad" that it was impossible for the German leftist and liberal/socialist/communist factions to work together, and Hitler was elected in 1933. Good thing nothing bad happened after that, right?

Anyway. Don't be Ernst Thalmann. The end.

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Victor Bodson 

Victor Bodson was a Luxembourger politician who created an escape route for German Jews fleeing Hitler and saved over 100 lives, at great risk to his own.

Born in 1902 in one of the smallest countries in Europe, Victor was equally comfortable on the athletic field and in the halls of power. An avid swimmer, boxer and motorcycle racer in his youth, Victor became a successful lawyer and political activist. He became a member of his small country’s Board of Deputies in 1934, and the next year was elected to a council seat in Luxembourg City. 

Victor lived on the Sauer River, which forms the border between Luxembourg and Germany. As Hitler and the Nazis rose to power in the 1930’s, it became increasingly difficult for Jews to leave Germany. Desperate  Jews began crossing the treacherous Sauer River, hoping to find safety in the small kingdom. Fortunately for them, Victor Bodson was waiting on the other side to ferry them to safety. An expert driver and mechanic, Victor equipped his vehicle with a specially-designed apparatus to completely hide the passengers. When the Jewish refugees exited the river, they followed secret directions to Victor’s house, where he provided them with dry clothing and other basic needs. Then he ferried them to safe houses that he’d arranged and prepared beforehand.

Victor continued his heroic lifesaving efforts for seven years, from 1933 to 1940. He did this despite knowing that if the Nazis found out, he could be executed without trial. He took many risks during those seven years, never knowing whom he could trust when looking for people to hide Jews, never knowing if the Nazis were on his trail, and traveling through treacherous forests during bitter winter months. The exact numbers are unknown, and Victor did not talk about his brave actions, but historians estimate that he saved approximately 100 people – not to mention all those peoples’ descendants.

In May 1940, Germany invaded Luxembourg and Victor was unable to continue helping Jewish refugees. Most of the Luxembourg government fled in a motorcade, but Victor stayed behind to provide help amid the chaos. Later, using knowledge of backroads gained during his time as a motorcyclist, he escaped to France, then Portugal, and finally to Montreal, Canada where he became part of the Luxembourg government in exile. For the remainder of the war, Victor continued to help Jews and other refugees by providing them with entry visas to Canada and the United States. In 1942 the Gestapo put him on their most wanted list, but they were unable to do anything to him because he was so far away.

After the war, Victor returned to his homeland and served as a high level government commissioner, first in the justice department and later as the transportation minister. In 1971, Victor was deeply touched to be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem. He wrote a beautiful letter of gratitude for the honor, humbly downplaying his own actions and saying that he was simply fulfilling his human duty to help others.

Victor Bodson died in 1984. He remains a source of pride to his countrymen who named the beautiful Victor Bodson Bridge after him. 

For saving one hundred lives over seven years, we honor Victor Bodson as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[verbotenlove33]

A Day in Adi’s Life: 10 November 1933

On 10 November 1933, Adolf Hitler delivered a speech at the Siemens Dynamo factory in Berlin. Ten thousand Siemens employees were able to see and hear the Führer in the Dynamowerk during his last great appeal to the German people for a unanimous commitment to world peace and to campaign for support in the Parliamentary elections taking place two days later.

[mrpagesfrontispiece]

March 23, 1933.

On that date, Adolf Hitler put the Enabling Act up for a vote before the Reichstag. The passage of this act marked the end of the Weimar Republic, and German democracy as everyone knew it. But there was resistance. Otto Wels, one of the greatest speakers to ever live and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, stood before his peers in the assembly, many of whom were ready to capitulate to Fascism, and gave the following speech.

Ladies and gentlemen! We Social Democrats agree with the foreign policy demand raised by the Reichskanzler of equal treatment for Germany, all the more emphatically since we have always fundamentally championed it. In this context, I may be permitted the personal remark that I was the first German who stood up to the untruth of Germany’s guilt for the outbreak of the world war before an international forum, at the Bern Conference on February 3, 1919. Never was a principle of our party able to or did in fact prevent us from representing the just demands of the German nation to the other peoples of the world. 

The day before yesterday, as well, the Reichskanzler made a statement in Potsdam to which we subscribe. It says: “From the lunacy of the theory of eternal winners and losers came the madness of reparations and, in their wake, the catastrophe of the world economy.” This statement is true for foreign politics; it is no less true for domestic politics. Here, too, the theory of eternal winners and losers is, as the Reichskanzler says, lunacy. 

But the words of the Reichskanzler remind us of others that were spoken in the National Assembly on July 23, 1919. At that time it was said: “We are defenseless; defenseless but not without honor. To be sure, the enemies are after our honor, there is no doubt. However, that this attempt at defamation will one day redound back upon the instigators, that it is not our honor that is being destroyed by this global catastrophe, that is our belief to the last breath.” 

This appears in a declaration that a social democratic-led government issued at the time in the name of the German people before the whole world, four hours before the truce expired, in order to prevent the enemies from marching further. – That declaration is a valuable supplement to the statement by the Reichskanzler. 

A dictated peace is followed by few blessings, least of all at home. A real national community cannot be based on it. Its first prerequisite is equal law. The government may protect itself against raw excesses of polemics; it may rigorously prevent incitements to acts of violence and acts of violence in and of themselves. This may happen, if it is done toward all sides evenly and impartially, and if one foregoes treating defeated opponents as though they were proscribed. Freedom and life can be taken from us, but not our honor. 

After the persecutions that the Social Democratic Party has suffered recently, no one will reasonably demand or expect that it vote for the Enabling Act proposed here. The elections of March 5 have given the governing parties the majority and thus the possibility of governing in strict adherence to the words and meaning of the constitution. Where such a possibility exists, there is also an obligation to take it. Criticism is salutary and necessary. Never before, since there has been a German Reichstag, has the control of public affairs by the elected representatives of the people been eliminated to such an extent as is happening now, and is supposed to happen even more through the new Enabling Act. Such omnipotence of the government must have all the more serious repercussions inasmuch as the press, too, lacks any freedom of expression.

Ladies and gentlemen! The situation that prevails in Germany today is often described in glaring colors. But as always in such cases, there is no lack of exaggeration. As far as my party is concerned, I declare here: we have neither asked for intervention in Paris, nor moved millions to Prague, nor spread exaggerated news abroad. It would be easier to stand up to such exaggerations if the kind of reporting that separates truth from falsehood were possible at home. It would be even better if we could attest in good conscience that full protection in justice has been restored for all. That, gentlemen, is up to you. 

The gentlemen of the National Socialist party call the movement they have unleashed a national revolution, not a National Socialist one. So far, the relationship of their revolution to socialism has been limited to the attempt to destroy the social democratic movement, which for more than two generations has been the bearer of socialist ideas and will remain so. If the gentlemen of the National Socialist Party wanted to perform socialist acts, they would not need an Enabling Law. They would be assured of an overwhelming majority in this house. Every motion submitted by them in the interest of workers, farmers, white-collar employees, civil servants, or the middle class could expect to be approved, if not unanimously, then certainly with an enormous majority. 

And yet, they first want to eliminate the Reichstag in order to continue their revolution. But the destruction of that which exists does not make a revolution. The people are expecting positive accomplishments. They are waiting for effective measures against the terrible economic misery that exists not only in Germany but in the whole world. We Social Democrats bore the responsibility in the most difficult of times and for that we had stones cast at us. Our accomplishments for the reconstruction of the state and the economy, for the liberation of occupied territories, will stand the test of history. We have established equal justice for all and a social labor law. We have helped to create a Germany in which the path to leadership of the state is open not only to princes and barons, but also to men from the working class. You cannot back away from that without relinquishing your own leader. The attempt to turn back the wheel of history will be futile. We Social Democrats know that one cannot undo the facts of power politics with mere legal protests. We see the power-political fact of your present rule. But the people’s sense of justice is also a political power, and we shall not cease to appeal to this sense of justice. 

The Weimar Constitution is not a socialist constitution. But we stand by the principles enshrined in, the principles of a state based on the rule of law, of equal rights, of social justice. In this historic hour, we German Social Democrats solemnly pledge ourselves to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No Enabling Act gives you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible. After all, you yourselves have professed your adherence to Socialism. The Socialist Law has not destroyed social democracy. German social democracy will draw new strength also from the latest persecutions. 

We greet the persecuted and the oppressed. We greet our friends in the Reich. Your steadfastness and loyalty deserve admiration. The courage of your convictions and your unbroken optimism guarantee a brighter future.

These immortal words burned brightly in the minds of all who fought for Democracy in the years that were to come. And another thing; Democracy did come! The Nazis lost! Because, as the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Justice.” The night is dark, but it is joy which comes in the morning. No power on earth has been able to resist Democracy for long, and no power ever will. Four years of Hell are nothing compared to what we shall feel once the ideals we hold sacred triumph again, and I guarantee you that they shall triumph. If ever you should feel hopeless, remember Otto Wels, and imagine what must have gone through his mind as he watched his nation burn itself to death. But so too remember Otto Wels as the Russians marched into Berlin, as the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, and take heart knowing that like him you too shall see your country born again, brighter than ever before.

We greet the persecuted and the oppressed. We greet our friends in America. Your steadfastness and loyalty deserve admiration. The courage of your convictions and your unbroken optimism guarantee a brighter future.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

In 2016, JD Vance not only called Donald Trump “reprehensible,” but raised alarm bells that Trump could be “America’s Hitler.” Vance was right on both counts—as Trump’s former chief of staff and retired four star United States Marine Corp General John Kelly made clear in two jaw-dropping interviews published this week.

Kelly raised two bright red flags that paint a dark and deeply disturbing picture for our nation if Trump were to return to office. First, there was Kelly’s comments to The Atlantic that Trump made it clear that, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”   Kelly had in the past explained to Trump that in reality German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” But “this correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him, the president responded.” Kelly confirmed that past conversation with Trump to The Atlantic in this new article. The Atlantic continued with this concerning passage, “Trump has responded incredulously when told that American military personnel swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president.” That was backed up Kelly who told the NY Times in an article published Tuesday about Trump, “That was a big surprise to him that the generals were not loyal to the boss, in this case him.”

While Trump may not be well read in history, he instinctively understood that Hitler--after he became the chancellor of Germany in 1933--required the military swear an oath to him personally. As the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s online encyclopedia explains, “The oath was no longer one of allegiance to the Constitution or its institutions, but one of binding loyalty to Hitler himself.” That oath--quoted below--demanded unconditional loyalty to Hitler: “I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and People, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, unconditional obedience, and that I am ready, as a brave soldier, to risk my life at any time for this oath.” The Holocaust Encyclopedia notes this “oath represented the beginning of a process of politicization, or Nazification, of the German military.” The result was, “The distinction between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Hitler—and the Nazi Party—swiftly eroded.”  That meant if you defied an order of Hitler, you were a traitor to the nation: “Refusal now represented a high crime against not only Germany, but also the Führer himself.” By 1935, the loyalty oath to Hitler was also mandated for civilian officials working in the German government. That meant like the military, the entire government workforce had to be loyal to Hitler above the constitution of Germany.

That’s exactly what Trump has always sought and would demand if he won this election.  As a reminder, Project 2025 contemplates a federal workforce loyal to Trump. Thus, if Trump wins, he and his allies would usher in the Trumpification of every aspect of our institutions by demanding absolute loyalty from military leaders to those working in the federal government. We know from Nazi history what that type of blind loyalty led to from carrying out a “blood purge” where German citizens viewed as Hitler’s political critics/rivals were arrested and murdered to the evils of The Holocaust. But Kelly was not done warning America. He told the NY Times something we all know but needs to be said by someone like Kelly: Trump not only rejects our Constitution and American values—but has embraced fascism. Kelly first put it this way about Trump, “He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America, America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government.” Adding, “He’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.” Then Kelly went further. Kelly noted that Trump “met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”

As Kelly explained, “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said. Adding, “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.” (This echoes the recent comments of Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley who warned that Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”)

Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly rightly warns that Donald Trump “met the definition of a fascist”. Kelly’s warning to the American people should serve as a reminder that voting for Kamala Harris is best for keeping America free.

See Also:

NBC News: Former White House chief of staff John Kelly says Trump praised Hitler while in office

The Week: Trump aims to be a fascist dictator, John Kelly says

[loving-n0t-heyting]

This is such a basic point it feels embarrassing to even belabour it but the Nazis in Germany never won a popular electoral majority in any multi-party election. Even under the extremely dubious March 1933 election, in which nazi paramilitary units were tasked with supervising the vote process. The ppl had a voice at the ballot box, and they said “No” to Hitler. Anyone who tells you the German public was swept up in practically unanimous nazi fever is either trying to sucker you or has been themselves suckered

[mariacallous]

BERLIN — The success of German extremists in Sunday’s European Parliament election has mainstream Jewish leaders and politicians worried. Some say they fear the country is veering into political territory that resembles the era just before the rise of the Nazis here nearly a century ago.

The strong showing for far-right parties reflects worries about increasing numbers of Muslim refugees since 2015 in Germany. The Alternative for Germany Party stresses isolationism, takes an anti-EU and pro-Russian stance, and is accused of fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment. Some of its most extreme representatives have also belittled the Holocaust, saying that Germany has paid enough penance for the sins of an older generation.

Mainstream Jewish leaders raised the alarm about AfD soon after it was founded in 2013, and their concern has grown with each new success of the party on the local, national and international levels.

Now, “the fact that right-wing and left-wing populist parties received a fifth of the votes in the European Parliament elections in Germany should give all democratic forces pause,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in a statement after the election on Monday.

“That is no longer a protest vote,” Schuster added. “I am very concerned that the AfD in particular, with its clear links to extreme right-wing ideas and its leading candidates’ connections to dictatorial regimes, was able to achieve such a result.”

The AfD gained several percentage points since the last election, giving it four more seats for a total of 15 in the legislative body that passes EU laws and is meant to safeguard democracy. The entire parliament is scheduled to grow from 705 to 720 members after this election.

Italy, France and Germany saw significant gains for far-right parties; such parties came in first in five out of the 27 member countries and second or third in five other countries. The main losers were Liberal and Green parties.

In Sunday’s election, the AfD came in second to Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and its more conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.

The result came as no surprise to pundits who have watched the AfD edging out other mainstream parties in local elections across Germany in recent years, forcing its opponents to form convoluted coalitions in an attempt to smother the extremist voice.

“Many voters are obviously so dissatisfied with the current government policy that they are prepared to strengthen the political fringes — above all the AfD,” said Elio Adler, founder of the non-partisan, Berlin-based Jewish Values Initiative. “We therefore strongly advise the established parties not to base their policies on what the AfD does or says, but on what the citizens of the country want and/or are concerned about.”

That the far-right party has now done so well in Europe, Adler said, is “extremely alarming: for democracy and, as one of the most vulnerable groups, even more so for us Jews.”

Green Party politician Sergey Lagodinsky, who managed to keep his place in the EU parliament despite his party’s loss of 9 out of 12 seats, expressed similar worries.

“It’s quite alarming, generally, that we are having some dynamics that are pointing towards a Weimar mood,” said Lagodinsky, who is Jewish and came to Germany from Astrakhan with his family in 1993. Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic came to an end with the rise of the Nazi party in 1933, borne by a populist wave.

The AfD is “mimicking a pro-Jewish party because it fits their anti-Muslim agenda,” Lagodinsky said. “And this is something appealing for our community, which is really worried and insecure now and under attack, I would say.”

Mass protests against the AfD took place earlier this year following revelations that the party had held a secret meeting at a lakeside villa to discuss plans to deport foreigners, including those who had become German citizens. Prominent neo-Nazis attended the meeting, according to the news organization that broke the story, inducing painful echoes of the gathering of Nazi leaders at nearby Wannsee in 1942 to devise a plan to deport and then murder Jews.

While support for the AfD dipped in polls at the time, it soon rebounded and then accelerated. And the group’s supporters rallied themselves last weekend in advance of the elections, displaying signs that called for mass removal of immigrants.

Some AfD supporters in the Jewish community told JTA that mainstream concerns are misplaced. The real problems are with antisemitism coming from Muslims in Germany, they say.

You don’t have to be a right-winger to vote for the AfD, said Marcel Goldhammer, a journalist and standup comedian in his late 20s who divides his time between Germany and the United States.

“I see myself totally in the middle of the road,” he said in a call from Boston. “I’m for border security and I am a patriot, and I think there is nothing wrong with it.”

Artur Abramovych, president of the AfD’s Jewish caucus, told JTA he was in a celebratory mood. But serious work has to be done, he added.

“As a Jew, of course, the thing I’m the most concerned about is the rise of antisemitism here,” Abramovych said in a phone interview. “It’s mainly due to the Muslim mass immigration. That’s absolutely clear. Everyone who tries to tell you something else is either a liar or paid by the German government,” he said. His implication was that the Central Council of Jews in Germany parrots the political stance of the federal government, which is its main funder.

Government statistics show that most antisemitic crimes whose perpetrators are identified are committed by someone with a far-right background.

But many crimes are never solved. And Abramovych, a 28-year-old writer whose family came to Germany from Ukraine in the 1990s, said he believed that some of that are have been mischaracterized.

“In 2017, in Munich, at the Oktoberfest, there was an Afghan refugee who stood on the table and showed the Hitler greeting,” which is illegal in Germany.  “We had a grotesque case where a Syrian refugee painted swastikas on the walls of the refugee camp,” he added. He said he believed the police counted both incidents as right-wing extremist.

As a Zionist, he said he is also proud to note that the AfD “is the only party in Germany which is in favor of stopping funding UNRWA.” Some countries, including the United States, froze funding to the United Nations agency serving Palestinian refugees amid revelations that employees participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel; Germany initially joined the freeze but signaled more recently that it would resume funding UNRWA.

The concerns of voters like Abramovych must not be left to the right-wing to solve, said Lagodinsky.

“We have to do something in the realm of security policies, homeland security. We have to address the Islamist issue. We have to,” he said. But he said that could be done “without ourselves copying the hateful way and hateful patterns” of the populist parties.

[dead-salmon]

"at least with kamela i'll get my abortion rights back!"

did you know that the germans (who weren't queer, non-aryan, communists or related to poc&jews) benefited a lot from electing hitler back then?

unemployment levels decreased from 5million to under a million! businesses profited a lot! farmers struggled less under the nazis! the general standard of living increased, working conditions improved! a lot of housing became available! (because any non..: ..cishet ..german ..aryan people got killed and their houses raided, obviously.) german childcare was great! (because the nazis sure cared about getting more little soldiers and indoctrinating their youth to blindly follow them)

fun fact: many of the people who elected hitler back then didn't even care too much about him wanting to genocide all the jews, that wasn't why they voted for him. anti-semitism ran high in all of europe for centurues, yes, but it wasn't their main reason to elect him. they got told THEIR lifes wouldn't get any worse and perhaps even BETTER, that's why they voted for him

still doesn't change the fact that they MOTHERFUCKING ELECTED THE GUY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MURDERS OF WELL OVER 6 MILLION PEOPLE

i don't fucking care how difficult and impossible electing third party will be for you. i do not fucking care how much worse trump is and how kamela is so much better in all other topics. you cannot try and look back on history and judge the german people of 1933 and then turn right back around and vote for harris because trump would be worse

you'll have just as much the blood of palestinians on your hands as the germans of 1933 have the blood of all the holocaust victims on theirs

be motherfucking aware that with this elections you're forfeiting your right to ever judge the people who elected hitler back then again

look i won't judge you for wanting to save your own life if you're part of a marginalized group. i won't judge you for being scared of trump. i will not judge you on self-preservation, i don't have the right to do that.

i will however judge you for the way you talk about the genocide in relation to the us-election (this is @ the "singular issue" crowd). i will judge you for who you're willing to sacrifice for your own life (how many until it's too much?). i will judge you for the way you'll talk about contributors of genocides for the rest of your life ("how could the germans elect hitler back then!?" promised benefits, the same way you're willing to elect a genocide endorser for your own).

[corporationsarepeople]

“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, they will do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

—Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate, Nov 12, 2023

Since the fascists, authoritarians always want to do two things — they want to change the way that people see violence, making it into something necessary and patriotic and even morally righteous, and they want to change the way people see their targets.

And so they use dehumanizing language. And former President Trump is doing both. He's been using his rallies since 2015 to shift the idea of violence into something positive. And now he's starting to use dehumanizing rhetoric, all these groups who live like vermin. And this is what the original fascists did. Hitler started talking about Jews as parasites in 1920.

So by the time he got in, in 1933, Germans had been exposed to this dehumanizing rhetoric for 13 years. And Mussolini literally talked about rats. After he had become dictator in 1927, he said, we need to kill rats who are bringing infectious diseases and Bolshevism from the east.

This matches up with Trump talking about immigrants bringing disease and other such things. So this is very dangerous rhetoric with a very precise fascist history.

…

There's a two-part thing that authoritarians do.

First, they change the view of violence. And Mr. Trump, since 2015, he started saying at his rallies, using his rallies and campaign events for radicalizing people. And he started saying, oh, in the old days, you used to hurt people. The problem is, Americans don't hurt each other anymore.

Now he's going into a new phase of openly dehumanizing his targets so that will lessen the taboos in the future. And we see that, in 2025, he's got plans for mass deportations, mass imprisonments and giant camps. So you need people to be less sensitive about violence, either committing it themselves or tolerating it.

And I see that as the reason he's using this dehumanizing rhetoric now, to prepare people.

…

This (being a proud election denier) is part of being much more overt about becoming an authoritarian and transforming America into some version of autocracy, because the endgame of election denial is actually to convince Americans that elections shouldn't be the way they choose their leaders, they're too unreliable.

And we're beginning to see this with his allies. Michael Flynn said we shouldn't — elections, we might not even have one. Tommy Tuberville, the senator, said let's not even have elections, or the talk about America is never — pure democracy doesn't work. All of this is part of a campaign of, you could call it mass reeducation of Americans to want forms of authoritarian rule that Trump will give.

…

In all cases of history that I have studied in my book "Strongmen," people did not take the various Hitlers and Mussolinis seriously until it was too late.

—Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Nov 13, 2023

[enemymine2000]

People are like: It's only 4 years, we will get through it. And by everything that might be out there and is holy, I hope you are right. But fascism came to power in Germany in 1933 legally, by being elected. Two days later the parliament was dissolved and due process abolished. That's why our current German constitution entails special provisions for that to never happen again - even our government now having imploded doesn't change the fact that we still have one, and will continue to have the very same one until the next election. It is written into our constitution that we have to be a constitutional democracy and that is the one Article that can never be changed. Is it absolutely failsafe? No. But it is something our grandparents (or great-grandparents depending on generation) did not have.

So, I hope you will get the chance to fair and free elections in 4 years. But if you don't you will need to have put in as many democrats as possible everywhere. Because those will be your line of defence in the cities, the town, the villages. Those will lessen the blows that will come from above. My hometown for example had the same fascist people on top as every other during the Third Reich. But below the basis was socialist. Things can not be sugarcoated, it was bad. But the minute the fascist regime was beaten, they were there to take back the reigns. To rebuild. And ever since that day my hometown has been leftist - German leftist, not US American leftist, so socialist. This is the first time since then we don't have a socialist, but a green mayor.

Again, that doesn't mean to sugarcoat anything. But to show you, why it matters that you still express your rights as long as you can. Your voting rights are a voting privilege. Use it!

[describe-things]

Just fyi: I'm German. I have nothing to lose or gain from the election, and can't even vote.

However, Trump will kill *more* Palestinians than Biden. Trump is the right-wing guy that - first thing in office (January 27th 2017) tried to ban Muslims from entering the US. He is the guy that moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing it as the Capital of Israel.

He presented a "peace plan" together with Benjamin Netanyahu that was widely criticized for requiring too few concessions from Israel.

The Ambassador to Israel under Trump stated that "that Israel “does not have to wait” to annex settlements in the West Bank and Jordan Valley."

Trump said that during the last debate about Palestine and Biden: "Actually, Israel is the one [that wants to keep going], and you should let them go and let them finish the job. He [Biden] doesn’t want to do it. He's become like a Palestinian but they don't like him because he's a very bad Palestinian. He's a weak one."

This is the man you want to vote into the White House? The one who wants to let Israel "finish the job"?

Obligatory friend tag (sorry y'all, describing-things claims I want to hide from my friends by using asks): @reboot-the-dog @kerri-the-skunk @catboybeebop @autistimnerdis @i-love-linux-and-reject-gender @nyateisback @vampire-bat-boy @whyredzero @yourlocalnerd07 @ill-steal-your-tea @martinwithagun @fluffylandshark

so you would Literally have voted for Hitler if this election were taking place in Germany in 1933 instead of the United States in 2024. Ok. Thanks for that info.

Why do you think admitting that is helping you prove you're not a white supremacist fascist.

So at any point are you gonna stop insiting that it's good and moral to sacrifice Palestinians for the sake of privileged white people in a country you've literally just admitted you're not even in?

[Image description start. The three panel, “Do you think Margaret Thatcher had girl power” meme, now edited so that the first panel shows the TV host asking: “Do you think you are protecting democracy by voting blue no matter who?” The second panel shows someone responding, “Yes, of course.” Panel 3 has the TV host asking, “Do you think you are protecting democracy by announcing to all politicians who will ever exist from now on that they can commit as many genocides as they want and they’ll still get elected because you literally don’t care what they do as long as they don’t do it to you?”. Image description end.]

[chicago-geniza]

People attribute the term "bad faith" to Sartre but they forget it was a set phrase in French and Latin well before existentialism came around, as evinced by Stefania Zahorska, who spoke fluent French, calque-ing it into Polish circa 1933 to describe a German scholar's offer of "apolitical" academic collaboration after Hitler's election