Disarming Citizens As Part Of Hitler’s Rise To Power Is Myth Perpetuated By America’s Right
Disarming Citizens As Part Of Hitler’s Rise To Power
Is Myth Perpetuated By America’s Right
In last week’s “Reflections,” Mr. Cooper repeated a fable beloved of the American right – the one entitled “Hitler in 1933.” This is a multi-purpose fable designed to warn us away from the spectrum of dangers facing homo americanus: gun control, socialist tyranny, the politics of resentment and victimhood, etc. (It’s a Christmas-tree fable, really: you can hang anything on it.)
Last week, Mr. Cooper’s fable seemed to be saying that, just like Hitler in 1933, Hillary Clinton, Al Sharpton, and the “mob” of cop-haters in Chicago are (1) threatening to unleash a reign of primordial savagery on American society, and (2) aiming to prepare the way for that by stripping Americans of their guns.
One assumption here is that Hitler consolidated his dictatorship by disarming the German population; another is that Hitler mobilized an aggrieved minority and turned it loose against the country. The first assumption is patently false; the second is true, but not – how shall I put it – “comfortably” true.
The Nazi Party’s rise to national prominence not only occurred against the backdrop of a general liberalization of gun laws – Hitler’s own firearms law of 1938 loosened gun regulations even further.
In 1928, a year before the Nazis’ big electoral breakthrough, the German government reversed an eight-year ban on all “military” weapons – not only hand grenades, but the standard issue bolt-action Mauser rifle, too. Now, anyone over 20 years old could get a license to buy up to 10 long guns and 100 rounds of ammunition provided that he (or she) was of sound mind, that he had never been convicted of arms offenses during the civil war, and that he was not a Gypsy. Pistols were still restricted, but policemen, civil servants, and members of the military were exempt from both the ban on pistols and the licensing regime in general.
Hitler’s firearms law of 1938 dropped the legal age to 18, removed the all-out ban on pistols, and expanded the list of people exempt from licensing to any member of the Nazi Party, the SA, the SS, the Hitler Youth, the Nazi “Motor Corps,” employees of the national bank and the highway system, and anyone designated by the Ministry of Air Transport of the Ministry of the Interior. Gypsies and the mentally ill were still out of luck.
It’s true that Jews, as “suspect” people, were ordered to surrender their licenses as early as 1933. At that time, however, Jews made up 0.76% of the total population – even if every single German Jew had been armed, their fate would have remained the same. The reason for that brings us to the uncomfortable truth about Hitler’s aggrieved minority.
The Nazis’ core constituency – not the protest-voters of 1929 and 1932, but their erstwhile base of support from 1924 onward – was not made up of Germans who understood themselves as members of a traditionally oppressed minority standing up for its right to be enslaved by government hand-outs. Instead, they understood themselves as the “real Germans” left behind by the modern world: typically shopkeepers, craftsmen, farmers, clerks, and pensioners; typically Protestant; and typically town dwellers. In their eyes, “big labor” had destroyed the value of work; “big industry,” “big agriculture,” and “big business” had made it impossible for the “little man” to succeed; women were too sexual and too well-employed; young people were wild, disrespectful, and lazy; and Germany’s place in the world was under attack by “international Jewry,” whose tentacles were everywhere. It was the core constituency that kept the Nazi Party afloat; it was the core constituency who, when presented with Nazi violence, often shrugged and said, “at least they’re beating up the right people.”
That said, the core constituency did not catapult Hitler into power. That was done by a succession of political leaders on the right and center-right who made it their business to destroy the republic in favor of an anti-Communist, authoritarian system that favored the military, heavy industry, and an aggressive foreign policy. They had no idea how powerful the politics of aggrieved nostalgia could be. They appointed Hitler chancellor, and then they found out.
John Ondrovci
Assistant Professor of German History
University of Mississippi