by Thom Hartmann

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and
was barely reported in the corporate media. But
the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago -
February 27, 1933. They commemorated the
anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized
citizens all across the world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide
economic crisis, received reports of an imminent
terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a
few famous buildings, but the media largely
ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew,
however, that the odds were he would
eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue
elements in the intelligence service helped
the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest
levels, in part because the government was
distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been
elected by a majority vote and the majority
of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a
simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of
a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the
intellect to understand the subtleties of running
a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of
language - reflecting his political roots in a
southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory
nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats,
foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and
media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret
society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that
involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although
he didn't know where or when), and he had
already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the
nation's most prestigious building was
ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed
to the scene and called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in
history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the
burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he
said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the
beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to
declare an all-out war on terrorism and its
ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the
Middle East and found motivation for their
evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was
built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected
allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism,
the leader's flag was everywhere, even
printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's
now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in
the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said
spawned it - that suspended constitutional
guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now
intercept mail and wiretap phones;
suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and
without access to their lawyers; police could
sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved
terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and
State" passed over the objections of concerned
legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset
provision on it: if the national emergency
provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and
rights would be returned to the people, and the
police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they
hadn't had time to read the bill before
voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal
police agencies stepped up their program of
arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers
or courts. In the first year only a few
hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by
the mainstream press, which was afraid to
offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity
ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in
public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the
newly empowered police's batons, gas, and
jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the
leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he
was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control
his tonality, gestures, and facial
expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the
suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a
formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial
pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of
referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The
Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the
introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous
propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As
hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an
us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land
was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign
lands. We are the "true people," he suggested,
the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others,
or human rights are violated in other nations
and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement
with the French over his increasing militarism,
he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost
in the best interest of his own nation was
neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the
League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then
negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The
United Kingdom to create a worldwide
military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the
people that he was a deeply religious man and
that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed
the need for a revival of the Christian faith
across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in
his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle
that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them
fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader
determined that the various local police and federal
agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and
overall coordinated administration necessary
to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those
citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry
and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various
troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He
proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the
homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens
of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies
under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of
this new agency, the Central Security Office
for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the
other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the
terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out
disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's
leader, or raising questions about his checkered
past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central
security office began advertising a program
encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This
program was so successful that the names of
some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio
stations. Those denounced often included
opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite
target of his regime and the media he now
controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone
wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and
forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest
corporations into high government positions.
A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the
war against the Middle Eastern ancestry
terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars
overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly
to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the
nation, particularly those previously owned
by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful
alliances with industry; one corporate ally got
the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale
detention center for enemies of the state. Soon
more would follow. Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack,
voices of dissent again arose within and without
the government. Students had started an active program opposing him
(later known as the White Rose Society), and
leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose
rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to
direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own
government, questions of his possibly
illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil
libertarians about the people being held in detention
without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media -
he began a campaign to convince the people of
the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was
harboring many of the suspicious Middle
Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who
had set afire the nation's most important
building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly
needed if they were to have room to live and
maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly
delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the
other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right
to strike preemptively in self-defense, and
nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out
that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past
by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's
Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and
lobbying with European nations, but, after he
personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was
struck. After the military action began,
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that
giving in to this leader's new first-strike
doctrine would bring "peace for our time."

Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of
popular support as leaders so often do in times of
war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new
leadership friendly to Germany, and German
corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said,
"Certain foreign newspapers have said that we
fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they
cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my
political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the
former frontier [into Austria] there met me
such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have
we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the
advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his
handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies
with patriotism and the nation itself.
National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists
or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded
in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they
said, there could be only "one people, one nation,
and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so
his advocates in the media began a
nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking
the nation itself. Those questioning him
were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested
they were aiding the enemies of the state
by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant
men in uniform. It was one of his most
effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom
most of the army came) against the
"intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was
successfully and quickly completed, and peace
returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The
almost-daily release of news bulletins about
the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the
populace and totally suppress dissent. A
full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing
rumbles within the country about
disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union
leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism
that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but
threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the
nation was now fully at war, and all internal
dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end
of Germany's first experiment with
democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few
milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist
Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing
of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that
catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped
the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action
to seize Austria, in which almost no German
blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the
history of his nation. Hailed around the world,
he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of the
homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the
SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly
violent warfare they named "lightning war"
or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also
produced a highly desirable "shock and awe"
among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book
"Shock And Awe" published by the National
Defense University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary
(Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this
definition of the form of government the German democracy had become
through Hitler's close alliance with the
largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to
keep power: fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system
of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and
business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to
remember that the ravages of the Great
Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s,
however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very
different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations
and reward the society's richest
individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people
of constitutional rights, and create an
illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war.
America passed minimum wage laws to raise the
middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of
corporations, increased taxes on corporations and
the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the
employer of last resort through programs to
build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice
is again ours.

===

Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the
author of over a dozen books, including
"Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This
article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but
permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so
long as this credit is attached.
http://www.thomhartmann.com