The “Slow Build” Myth

On the Book of Faces there was this.

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This “slow build” myth needs to die a gruesome death.  I’ve demolished that silly “Trump is a new Hitler” idea before.  But the general principle remains.

While the extermination camps came quite a bit later, most of what made Nazi Germany a totalitarian regime happened with remarkable rapidity once Hitler was appointed Chancellor to Germany.

24 days into Hitler’s chancellorship, 40,000 SA and SS men were given police powers–sworn in as “Auxiliary Police”.  The population of Germany then was about 62 million.  The US population at the beginning of 2017 was 324 million, more than five times as much.  24 days into “the new Hitler” where’s the 200,000 SA and SS equivalent made into auxiliary police?

27 days into Hilter’s chancellorship, less than a month, and the Reichstag fire happened.  The Congressional building is still standing, no fire.

28 days (still less than a month) and The Reichstag, seeing their meeting place burned and the burning attributed to enemies, grants Hitler expanded powers–the Reichstag Fire Decrees.

31 days, one month in, and the first concentration labor camp was opened–Orianenberg–for political opponents of Hitler’s regime.  While some people like to use the term “concentration camp” to refer to detention centers used to house illegal aliens caught trying to illegally enter the United States, you could not get out of this one by simply asking to be deported to your home country.

52 days and Dachau and Buchenwald–two more concentration labor camps for political opponents of the regime–opened.

54 days–less than two months–and Hitler was granted dictatorial powers.

87 days, less than three months, and the “Secret State Police” were established.

101 days and mass burning of books that the Nazis find offensive started. (It’s not the Right, and certainly not Trump, banning, let alone burning, books for insufficient wokeness.)

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123 days, about 4 months in, forced sterilizations of those with “genetic defects” begin along with more concentration camps (and still none where you could get out by saying “send me home”).

136 days, still in that fifth month, all parties but the Nazi party outlawed.

Within six months of his appointment as Chancellor, Hitler and the Nazis had seized total, complete, and uncontested power in Germany.  While the mass executions and exterminations had to wait for a few more years, when it came to seizing power and crushing dissent, they moved lightning quick.  Nazi Germany went from a democratic republic to a totalitarian regime not in years but in months.

The “slow build” thing is a myth, pure and simple.

5 thoughts on “The “Slow Build” Myth”

  3. It’s a sad indication of the lack of history teaching in our society. Most people have no earthly idea how Hitler came to power in Germany, and most think that he was just elected to lead a stable, liberal, democratic society, because he shouted stuff, or something.

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  4. I have a modest proposal for those claiming the detention centers are “concentration camps”.

    How about we simply treat them as invaders and shoot them as before they try to cross. That would solve the issue handily. Right?

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  5. and still none where you could get out by saying “send me home”
    However, they did allow a bunch of jews to escape by emigration. At first. I don’t think it was until ~1939 that you couldn’t get out of NAZI territory as a Jew if you had the right papers. (Now, getting the right papers. That’s where a lot of the Righteous Among The Nations came in.)

    Nazi Germany went from a democratic republic to a totalitarian regime not in years but in months.
    Let’s state, for the record, however, that its shift from Weimar Germany* to NAZI Germany was a “slow” evolution. It took about a decade to go from a runt of a man leading a bunch of intellectual runts who liked beating people up to a runt man in a leadership position of the entire German government.THAT bit is where people should be concerned about a “slow build”.

    And, frankly, we have had a slow build to that. It’s taken us a century to move from runt socialism (Wilson) to people full-blown using violence to attempt to achieve their communist goal of taking over our Republic. Let’s hope enough of the electorate can smell the rhetoric from the progressives now and recognize it for what it is: the ticket to anti-Freedom and a diminished people**.

    (* The browser spell-checker insists “Weimar” is spelled incorrectly, despite all sources. [Also, the fact I know German.])
    (** “People” here is not racial, but nationalistic. I think the American people – at least, those who embody our Republic, from then until now – are a distinct people by culture and attitude. Not all of them are citizens when born, but a great many of them eventually find their way here. Destroying that unique culture and attitude is a prime goal of the progressives.)

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