Rise of the Third Reich, Hitler, Obama

[Sandra]

Rise of the Third Reich, Hitler, Obama

Echoes of 1930s Germany?

By Alan Caruba Sunday, October 10, 2010

Time and again in these troubled and troubling times people make
reference to Germany in the 1930s, the rise of the Third Reich, and to
Hitler as they express their fears regarding the Obama administration.


It is an interesting comparison if only because it reveals a sense that
an authoritarian government is poised to impose its dictates. This is
highly unlikely if only because the forthcoming midterm elections give
every indication of overturning any such ambitions by the present
administration.

It is, for example, bleeding its top economic advisors, the former chief
of staff to the President, the sudden resignation of the president’s
national security advisor, and, most tellingly, virtually every Democrat
running for office is running away from Obama’s legislative
agenda.

Obama is hardly a Hitler and the Democrats are hardly Nazis. It’s a bad
comparison.

I think what is at the heart of the comparison is the way, in just under
two years, Americans witnessed the government takeover of the healthcare
sector, one sixth of the economy, the takeover of General Motors and
Chrysler to the benefit of the United Auto Workers and the loss of their
creditors and bondholders, and a so-called stimulus package that by most
accounts has wasted billions.

The general anxiety is bolstered by the stagnation of the job market and
a widespread belief that Obama, Pelosi and Reid, along with the Democrats
in Congress, have taken the nation in the wrong direction. Those familiar
with history see the kind of conditions that existed in Germany in the
1930s that were the background for the rise of the Hitler and the Nazi
Party. Hitler, however, was not massively abandoned by his supporters as
Obama as been.

It happens that I have been reading a book, “Berlin at War”, by historian
Roger Moorhouse. What we tend to forget is that the National Socialist
party, led by Hitler, was freely elected to power by Germans and, in
general, had their support because of its early success energizing a
moribund economy.

Though we know in hindsight that Hitler was a monster, at the time he
gave Germans a reason to take pride in their nation again and he proved
adept at adding more territory to Germany without firing a shot. In the
years leading up to the invasion of Poland in 1939, Berliners and other
Germans were generally content with Hitler and the party.

It wasn’t until 1943 that Berliners began to feel the affects of the war
in ways other than rationing and the conscription of their fathers,
brothers, and sons. “After the first spate of bombings through late 1940
into the spring of 1941, there had followed a period of almost two years
in which Royal Air Force raids on the capital became fewer and farther in
between,” noted Moorhouse. “So, when the RAF reappeared in the skies over
Berlin on the night of 1 March, it came as a shock.”

Americans were shocked to see Obamacare rammed through the House and
Senate on a party line vote. It came after nearly a million Americans had
shown up at the steps of the Capital building to protest against it.


In effect, the Obama administration had declared war on Americans. It was
not merely unresponsive to the majority, but contemptuous of it.


What Obama forgot or never knew is that our government exists with the
consent of the governed. What he forgot or never knew is that our
presidents govern, not rule.

Something quintessentially American occurred.

The same sense of unity and urgency that Americans felt after Pearl
Harbor, that spurred the Greatest Generation to take on totalitarian
threats in two theatres of combat, occurred in the rise of the Tea Party
movement because many Americans perceived that their nation was literally
under siege by an enemy and this time it was an internal one.

It took twelve years of Nazi rule and the reduction of Berlin to rubble
for the usurpation of power to end on May 9, 1945. Compare that, then,
with the Obama administration that began on January 20, 2009 followed by
a swift loss of public support because of, not despite, its thuggish
political effort to reshape the American model into a European socialist
one.

Americans are just weeks away from “taking back” their nation from a man
who hid or denied his real life from the voters to get elected on the
basis of his oratorical skills and the stage managing of mass gatherings
that were curiously reminiscent of Nazi rallies.

Obama had the good luck of having a lackluster opponent and a financial
crisis that too conveniently broke just before the election in 2008. Even
so, his margin of victory was slim.

It is not 1930s Germany. It is America in the first decade of a new
century with new challenges.

It is an America that has been through recessions and even a Great
Depression, and which must learn again the fundamentals of the Founding
Fathers; the need for a small, limited central government, the importance
of sovereign, independent States, fiscal prudence, and citizens free to
make their own choices regarding their lives.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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