The Whole World Had to Pay for Germany’s Law and Order

Adolf Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933

“My Fuhrer, the swastika banner is still standing above Stalingrad.” This is a sentence of the telegram from Friedrih Paulus, the commander of the 6th German army. The addressee of the telegram was Adolf Hitler.

There are just a few days left until the celebration of the great 60th anniversary of the Soviet Army’s victory in the Stalingrad battle. There have been a lot of movies made and books written about this event. The Stalingrad battle is considered to be the starting point in the crucial change of the Great Patriotic War, or WWII. This battle was the beginning of the Nazi regime end. This date coincided with another date, although it happened about a decade before the Stalingrad battle took place. Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933. Needless to mention that this man unleashed the bloodiest war over the entire history of the mankind.

Researchers will probably spend a lot of time, trying to find out, how a poorly-educated private first class from Vienna managed to become the leader of a civilized country. However, Adolf Hitler had a peculiar feature, which none of his political opponents had. He was very good at guessing what people wanted. He was also very good at manipulating people for the sake of his own needs. The set of mottoes that Hitler used was very simple and the majority of the German people understood his mottoes and slogans: to retrieve Germany’s lost grandeur and to guarantee each German citizen a worthy living. There was the same precision with Germany’s enemies: Jews, communists, social democrats, the “parasites of the German nation.” Therefore, there is no paradox about the fact that Hitler became the leader of the German nation in an absolutely legal way. The political, military and economic elite of Germany assisted in that in all possible ways: Hitler promised everyone that specific interests of every class would be executed first and foremost.

The German society was tired of the economic mess of the Great Depression. The people were tired of constant changes of the government. They were longing to have the leader, who would change something for them, who would establish law and order very quickly. The vast majority of the German people did not really care, which methods and ways were going to be used for the purpose of order and prosperity. Furthermore, German intellectuals were also eager to have the strong power in the country. As a matter of fact, they were perfectly aware of what it might all lead to eventually. Psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm wrote that the people were ready to bid goodbye to their freedom in return to law and order.

The most paradoxical thing about it is the fact that the Nazi party was most popular in 1930-1931. Nazis lost two million votes at the Reichstag elections in November of 1932. This made Hitler go mad about his companions-in-arms. Most likely, that madness was just a performance. The Nazis knew it very well that there was only one thing that could prevent them from becoming the ruling party: the union between communists and social democrats. This union was not going to happen anyway. As a chancellor, Hitler was not worse than his predecessors on this position. This was communists’ stand. Social democrats considered communists as dangerous as Nazis. However, both communists and social democrats overestimated the extent of their political influence. Moreover, the latter overestimated the success of Weimar democracy. Hitler knew it perfectly that one should use any chance to get a grip on the power.

On January 30th, Paul Gingerburg, the President of Germany, offered Hitler to take the position of the chancellor. Military men and bourgeoisie hoped that they would be able to control the new head of the government. In addition to that, Nazis had only three ministerial positions in the original structure of the government. However, Hitler had something, which neither his opponents nor allies had: numerous, well-organized and aggressive gunmen. They took key posts in the German police, after Hitler came to power. It happened under the pretext of the fight with armed groups of communists and social democrats. German generals backed those gunmen for communists and social democrats stuck in their throat. The comedy with legitimate power takeover ended up very quickly. On February 27th 1933, Nazis put the Reichstag on fire, having blamed communists for that. The communist party was outlawed. Social democrats’ turn came in spring; the majority of them was completely demoralized by that time. Law and order was established in Germany, and the whole world had to pay for it.

On the photo: The building of the German Reichstag

Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov