The day after the German Reichstag was severely damaged by fire, in 1933, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, which had received only one-third of the popular vote a few months before, rammed through a decree that severely curtailed civil liberties, free speech, and political opposition. It reads, in part:
Article 1
Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of 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 permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.Article 2
If any state fails to take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, the Reich government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.Article 3
State and local authorities must obey the orders decreed by the Reich government on the basis of § 2.
Hitler was Germany’s chancellor, having been appointed only a month earlier by the country’s elderly and ailing conservative president, Paul von Hindenburg, as no party in the fractious parliament could put together a majority. Hitler’s followers had little interest in electoral percentages anyway; from its earliest days, the National Socialists had planned a takeover of government that would leave them as the nation’s ruling — and sole — political party. In 1928, Nazis propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels stated, “We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons,” adding, “If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. It does not concern us. Any way of bringing about the revolution is fine by us.”
A prisoner possessing knowledge detrimental to powerful people being discovered hanged in a jail cell is just another parallel between Donald Trump’s America and the 12 years of Nazi rule in Germany.
To this day, it is debated whether the Nazis set the Reichstag fire themselves or whether they simply used the event after the fact to blame their political enemies and seize dictatorial power. It’s worth noting that they found a scapegoat: a workman and supposed Communist caught on the scene with charcoal lighters and burning towels by Nazi leader Hermann Göring’s police force. These materials, however, were not adequate to have caused the massive and quickly spreading conflagration that so damaged the government building, as pointed out by Oberlin College history professor Robert E. Neil, in 1967:
At the time the Reichstag was burned the Chief Fire Director of Berlin was Walter Gempp. He had held the post for years and had achieved an international reputation. Gempp personally directed the fighting of the Reichstag fire. Soon after the event he allegedly made the following charges: that Göring had deliberately hindered the work of the fire department, that suspiciously large numbers of [Nazi paramilitary] S.A. men were already on the scene when the fire brigades arrived, and that the firemen had found quantities of unused incendiary materials in unburned parts of the Reichstag. In March, 1933, Gempp’s superiors suddenly dismissed him from his post for “permitting Communist activities in the force” — a preposterous charge, and in 1937 he was arrested and brought to trial for taking bribes. The court convicted Gempp and sentenced him to prison, but before the sentence could go into effect, he was found hanging in his cell.
A prisoner possessing knowledge detrimental to powerful people being discovered hanged in a jail cell is just another parallel between Donald Trump’s America and the 12 years of Nazi rule in Germany. Whether stonewalling the Jeffrey Epstein investigation; encouraging followers to storm the halls of government on January 6, 2021; sending National Guard troops tasked with patrolling city streets as a supposed crime deterrent to states where local authorities had not requested them; or allowing masked federal officers to demand citizenship papers from people who were not under arrest, the Trump administration is metaphorically yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater, hoping the resistance that then arises can be used as an excuse to in turn crack down that much more savagely, just as the Nazis did after the Reichstag fire. So far, patriotic citizens have resisted the urge to strike back in kind, restraint that further exposes Trump’s ICE agents as faceless bullies and agent provocateurs. ❖
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