"Though the Holocaust ranks high among the great human tragedies, most people never consider the most important question:
How did Adolf Hitler and the Nazis gain the power that they needed to commit such horror?
Focusing solely on the evil of the Holocaust won't get us very far toward the goal of the Jewish slogan "Never Again."
When Hitler came to power, he inherited decades of political consolidation by Otto von Bismarck and later the Weimar Republic that had weakened the political power of local jurisdictions. Through the Enabling Act (1933), whose formal name was "A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich," Hitler gained the power to enact laws with neither the involvement nor the approval of the Reichstag, Germany's parliament. The Enabling Act destroyed any remaining local autonomy. The bottom line is that it was decent Germans who made Hitler's terror possible —Germans who would have never supported his territorial designs and atrocities.
...Professor Rummel explained in the very first sentence of "Death by Government" that "Power kills; absolute Power kills absolutely. ...
When Hitler came to power, he inherited decades of political consolidation by Otto von Bismarck and later the Weimar Republic that had weakened the political power of local jurisdictions. Through the Enabling Act (1933), whose formal name was "A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich," Hitler gained the power to enact laws with neither the involvement nor the approval of the Reichstag, Germany's parliament. The Enabling Act destroyed any remaining local autonomy. The bottom line is that it was decent Germans who made Hitler's terror possible —Germans who would have never supported his territorial designs and atrocities.
...Professor Rummel explained in the very first sentence of "Death by Government" that "Power kills; absolute Power kills absolutely. ...
The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects."
That's the long, tragic, ugly story of government: the elite's use of government to dupe and forcibly impose its will on the masses.
The masses are always duped by well-intentioned phrases.
After all, what German could have been against "A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich"?
It's not just Germans who have fallen prey to well-intentioned phrases.
After all, who can be against the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"?
We Americans ought to keep the fact in mind that Hitler, Stalin and Mao would have had more success in their reign of terror if they had the kind of control and information about their citizens that agencies such as the NSA, the IRS and the ATF have about us.
We Americans ought to keep the fact in mind that Hitler, Stalin and Mao would have had more success in their reign of terror if they had the kind of control and information about their citizens that agencies such as the NSA, the IRS and the ATF have about us.
You might ask, "What are you saying, Williams?"
Just put it this way: No German who died before 1930 would have believed the Holocaust possible.
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