The WWI was over. German Revolution was declared a success and Weimar republic was proclaimed.
His rise was difficult and littered with obstacles. It started when the German government received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A terrorist had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. At the time the man who claimed to be the nations leader had not been elected by a majority vote and many claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. Six years later, this leader did not only command popularity and patriotic feelings of his nation but was also hailed as the Man of the Year by Times magazine.
He was a simpleton and had a coarse use of language. His simplistic and inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended foreign leaders and the well-educated elite. And, as a young man, hed joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name. The only visible talent he possessed was drawing.
“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history”, he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned building, surrounded by national media. He used the occasion to declare an all-out war on terrorism, originating, according to him, in the Middle East and in their religions.
Four weeks later, the nations now-popular leader had pushed through legislation – in the name of combating terrorism – 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; police could sneak into peoples homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism. To get his patriotic “Decree on the Protection of People and State” passed over the many objections of concerned legislators, he agreed to put a four-year provision on it. Citizens who protested the leader in public quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police, jail cells.
He wanted to stir a “racial pride” among his countrymen and began referring to the nation by Heimat (Homeland). Playing on this implicitly racial nationalism, he argued that any international body that didnt act first and foremost in the best interest of his nation was neither relevant nor useful. He withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in 1933, and in 1935 negotiated a naval armaments agreement with England. He reached out to industry, bringing former executives of the nations largest corporations into high government positions.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious Christian. Every then German soldier was sporting a belt buckle with “Gott Mit Uns” (God Is With Us).
But after an interval of peace, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. His propaganda minister intensified the nationalistic campaign. Those questioning him were labeled anti-German or not good Germans. Another technique was to manufacture news, through the use of paid shills posing as reporters, seducing real reporters with promises of access to the leader in exchange for favorable coverage, and veiled threats to those who exposed his lies.
In 1939, to “attenuate” the economic decline and re-unify the nation, he pointed at an external threat: Czechoslovakia. Shortly after, Poland was invaded in a defensive, pre-emptive action.
As his propaganda minister said:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
This dictum not only became reality in Germany but also with it, the leaders popularity grew as the nation plunged into yet another world war.
Adolf Hitler put an end to the first democratic experiment in Germany.
Another democratic failure has just inaugurated the 21st Century: The United States of America.
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