In the spring of 1933, using his position as Chancellor of Germany to intimidate all opposition and secure martial law after his henchmen burned down the Reichstag building, an ascendant but still vulnerable Adolph Hitler decided it was time to put the elbow on the nation’s top industrialists. The Nazis needed money as a national election approached.
Hitler’s message to the tycoons he assembled was twofold. First, he wanted to assure them their interests would be top Nazi priorities and looked after as only the Brown Shirts could. Unions would be destroyed, regulations ignored, the playbook for riches skewed accordingly, all while returning the German brand back to its rightful glory after decades of decay. That was the carrot. Next, and of greater importance to Hitler, came the stick. They should understand he wasn’t taking no for an answer and intended to gain total power with or without their blessing; they could come along for the ride or be loaded into boxcars later at the station.
How clear did he make this point? “We are about to hold the last election,” was how he introduced the subject. Hitler preferred the credibility a decisive rout would provide, but meant to achieve his aims regardless of the outcome. There would be “no retreat” either way, he promised. Even if the Nazis were rebuked, he would stay in power “by other means” utilizing “other weapons.” In other words, it was a shakedown they should be willing victims for, because their fortunes “…cannot be maintained in a democracy.”
And how did the best and brightest of Germany’s private sector respond to the demands of a 43-year old ex-felon, who had failed at virtually every venture he had previously undertook, and who had authored a book about his obsession to destroy the European order and viscously persecute non-Aryans, particularly Jews? They couldn’t get their checkbooks out fast enough. Shark Tank it wasn’t! The Nazis then commenced to carry out the most violent domestic political campaign in European history. Within the year Hitler had no remaining public political opposition, real elections were indeed over, and a facility called Dachau was open for the business of ruining anyone deemed a traitor to the Reich.
But if Weimar elites displayed shameful greed and cowardice in simpering to Fascist thuggery, England’s leadership would say “hold my pint.” Unless one lived through the critical period of 1932-1940 and paid very close attention to events of the day, or has done a far deeper dive into history than any sort of basic high school and college courses provide, it is difficult to appreciate just how misguided and utterly craven the Appeasement policy was.
Time and again, at every critical juncture – Austria, the Rhineland, and most famously the Sudetenland and then the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which would be consumed in full view and in direct violation of the infamous Munich Agreement – Hitler and his sycophants treated British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain et al with the same fait accompli scorn used on German industrialists. When Chamberlain returned from Munich, deal in hand, Sudetenland Czechs stabbed in the back, he was greeted throughout England as a hero. Within a year it was clear to everybody, with the exception of the still deluded Prime Minister, that Der Furher had his own plans all along.
Totalitarian rule requires the pursuit of conquest and throughout the mid-30s Hitler placed Germany on a hyper-war footing, clear for anyone to see. His promise of a resurgent Germany again striking fear in the hearts of the continent that had vanquished it in WWI was the opioid both German masses, and more importantly, its military imbibed. However, Der Fuhrer’s timetable was at odds with Nazi military preparedness and his diplomacy wrote checks his available resources would not be able to cash if forced to do so.
History is clear that at any critical point had a then militarily superior England and France called Hitler’s bluff as he laid waste to treaty provisions the allies were bound to enforce, neither the German public or military leadership would have tolerated the disgrace of another rout. In fact, a cabal of generals and civilian supporters were prepared to launch a coup should Hitler order them into certain defeat. The Third Reich may well have died in its crib. Tragically, no English or French elected officials, with the most notable exception of Winston Churchill and his small group of back benchers, had any intention of rocking the normalcy boat. Peace was to be kept at all costs… including honor and decency.
And so the perfect storm symmetry of foreign appeasement reinforcing domestic capitulation was complete. By the fall of 1939, his Wehrmacht now preeminent on the continent, his total authority apparatus fully deployed at home, Hitler launched global calamity that spared few and destroyed millions, eventually leaving his country in ruins.
The nexus between Germany’s odious history and our own iteration of totalitarianism is now upon us. We sit at the precipice of a Fascist House Majority. Their makeup and playbook are nothing original; we’ve seen it all before. At the top is a mad man, a psychotic narcissist willing to destroy his nation in pursuit of rabid megalomaniacal objectives he expects his followers to perish for. Anyone not 100% in is an enemy to be abased and destroyed. Beneath him is an ascendant political class of cultish sycophants he created, mostly bottom feeders, mediocrities with little to recommend them other than unconditional subservience, fully willing to descend to any depth, endorse and implement any atrocity ordered by their master. And then there are the opportunists and cowards, those who know better but, as Gus McCray said after he hung his old friend Jake Spoon for falling in with a bad bunch “any wind can blow them.” Politicians without the will to oppose what they know is ruinous… go along to get along. This is the Republican Party we are poised to hand over control of our national legislative branch and various state governorships to.
America endured a sociopath’s nihilist Presidency and the pandemic he first ignored, and then weaponized – leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths – by placing routine and normalcy above all else. On January 6th we were forced out of our secure phantasm by violent sedition in our nation’s Capitol, literally imperiling the peaceful transfer of Presidential power our entire national identity is based on. Yet now, incredibly, with not only democracy but functional governance in the balance, we remain unable to perceive there is anything really to see here.
To be clear, the GOP is not asking, they are telling us power will be theirs. Somewhere along the line months ago our feckless mainstream horse race prognosticator industry decided MAGA nihilism, and a Republican President directly responsible for a mob who stormed the Capitol looking to hang a Vice President, was not dangerous enough to be deprived of “historical mid-term trends” inevitability. The fact that most GOP candidates parrot Trumpist sedition as a party platform didn’t seem to matter; after all, this is the party out of the White House and it’s the mid-terms… inflation and all that don’t you know.
While the Biden Administration pursued the thankless task of repairing civic hell left it by a predecessor who refused to allow a transition, making some mistakes along the way to be sure, but attending to its pledge to bring back good faith and institutional allegiance to the Presidency, Fox/AM promoted sedition and disfigured reality on a minute-to-minute basis. Republicans, no longer restrained by any obligation to facts, seized on the apocalyptic propaganda ($8 for a gallon of gas!!) and spewed the prophecy that only a red wave was possible come November. Anything else, like Trump’s near 8 million-vote defeat, wouldn’t add up. Big Lie orthodoxy, or as Chuck Todd or Amy Walters will tell you… GOP confidence.
The January 6th Committee, whose members will surely face abasing inquisition and sanction should Republicans prevail today, has laid bare the “other weapons” Trump was willing to employ rather than “retreat” after a decisive rebuke. His legacy is a Republican rank and file now enamored with the approach that got him impeached and may get him indicted. Never concede, file one lawsuit after another, make clear only fraud can deny you victory, threaten election officials, and most important… embrace the fanatics ready to do your bidding. Stochastic terrorism is now a primary part of the GOP quiver. Watching the attractive, hyper-polished and utterly sinister Kari Lake “campaign” for governor in Arizona is a chilling experience. She possesses the entire skill set in spades. Cersei Lannister is about to be given the throne of a critical battleground state.
One of the most effective strategies Hitler employed as he shredded the Treaty of Versailles and gobbled up tracts of real estate without having to fire a shot, was to have local Nazi zealots organized and ready to riot on demand. For example, Nazi thugs in Austria were prepared to cause chaos as Hitler harangued its leadership to accept his terms. Such unrest provided Berlin with a pretext to become “involved in restoring order” to protect citizens of German descent, whom Hitler deemed entitled to his protection. Elon Musk now controls Twitter. Yesterday he urged his millions of followers to vote Republican. There is no question at all Trump will be back and actively inciting seditious violence before long with a megaphone that Hitler could not have imagined.
On August 8 the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to seize top secret documents Trump had pilfered from the White House and stored unattended in closets. By all accounts the action was taken as a last resort to prevent catastrophic national security breaches. Not 24 hours had passed when Kevin McCarthy tweeted that he had “seen enough” and notified Attorney General Merrick Garland to “clear your calendar” for a public inquisition come January of 2023. Trump punctuated his eunuch’s intimidation efforts, declaring any attempt to hold him to account would create “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” Clear enough?
To say democracy is on the ballot today is like saying Marjorie Taylor Greene, who seems destined for big things in a GOP House majority, is a “firebrand legislator.” National survival is what this election is about. Today we are faced with two choices: either rebuke the GOP at the ballot box and confront the seditious chaos and unrest their candidates have promised; or capitulate and give them what they have hissed to us is theirs already, whether we like it or not. How many will vote Republican for cheaper gas, or simply to avoid trouble they figure MAGA losers will foment is unclear but probably determinative. America at the edge of an abyss. BC