When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History

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 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, 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
vander 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
briefaction to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed,
Hitlerwas 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.

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