[May want to reread: I had to edit to tighten up some cumbersome wording.]
I watched the unit on Hitler's rise to power again, and took some notes. The documentary is called
March to Victory: Road to Berlin.
Describing his first political campaign strategy. The authors called it a "modern whirlwind campaign:"
1)Speeches focused on encouragement with "heaps of vague promises."
2)Huge propaganda effort
3)Appearances were carefully staged, theatrical and with grandiose entrances and much pomp
4)Crowds were a "
wide-eyed, frenzied, screaming mass that surrendered to his will and looked upon him with pseudo-religous admiration."
5)He offered something to everyone
- National pride restored
- Work to the unemployed
- Prosperity
- Social Harmony
- End to class distinction (fairness)
His campaign didn't win him the election, but it won the virtually unknown National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZI) 107 seats in the Reichstat, and made them the 2nd largest party in the nation.
Prior to this, to rise to the position of the supreme leader (fuhrer) of, and to build support for the NAZI party, he created youth organizations much like the BSA, all busy doing community and national service. And to preserve his positition, he organized a staff guard (S.S.) responsible directly to him. (Apparently, as head of a party he could do this.) Compare this to Obama's "call to serve"
http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=54994 , and his stated desire for a civilian security force equal to the military and responsible directly to himself,
http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=54550 .
Then the market crash of 1929 hit. Things got tough everywhere, and the Socialists seized their moment. Under tremendous pressure from the public, Paul von Hindenberg appointed Adolph Hitler as Germany's Chancellor in January 30, 1933. His reception was described as follows:
They saluted Hindenberg as he looked out from a window of the Presidential Palace, then they waited at the Chancellory for Hitler in a scene carefully staged by Josesph Goebbels.
When he appeared in the beam of a spotlight, Hitler was greeted with an outpouring of worshipful adulation unlike anything ever seen before in Germany. "Heil Sig Heil!" "Hail! Hail, Victory!" went the chorus of those who believed the hour of deliverance had come in the form of this man now gazing down on them.
Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on January 30, 1933, "It is almost like a dream, a fairytale, the New Reich has been born."
The rest is history. Things to watch for:
- The systematic intimidation of businesses and other organizations that don't buy into The Great Sellout (my term for the Bailout)
- A revision of the oath of allegiance required of the military
- Measures taken to solidify the power of the party and increase its scope and power (Bailout, Census grab, elimination of the term limit on the President)
- Bold usurpations of his authority
- Shows of placating political opponents in a front to get them to yield ground.
