Lessons from Hitler – the danger of putting Trump on trial
Let’s begin with a recap of Trump’s indictments. The Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, first charged Trump in April with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, what prosecutors described as a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal and clear his path to the presidency in 2016. It’s not the hush money itself that puts Trump in jeopardy but the way he tried to hide the payments in his accounts, essentially the prosecutors allege that Trump misclassified campaign expenses as legal expenses.
Then, in June, the Justice Department indicted Trump on multiple criminal charges related to withholding classified government documents, storing them in a haphazard manner and showing them to people without security clearances. He’s also charged with obstructing the government’s efforts to recover them. These documents included some involving sensitive nuclear programs and others that detailed the country’s potential vulnerabilities to military attack.
In July, the Justice Department indicted Trump again on charges regarding his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Trump has been charged with attempting to obstruct an official government proceeding, the certification of the election results by Congress, and attempting to deprive people of civil rights provided by the Constitution. In other words, it is concerned with his role in the events that led to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. To directly quote the indictment, “The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified.” And it takes this further, saying Trump, “on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favour of the defendant.” Trump is also accused of recruiting fake electors in states won by Biden, trying to use the power of the Justice Department to fuel election conspiracy theories, and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the election or reject legitimate electors. And Trump and others are charged with exploiting the Jan. 6th riot to redouble his “efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.” Another quote from the indictment.
Finally (for now at least) in August, a county grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 associates on a collective 41 felony counts, with orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse Georgia’s results in the 2020 election and subvert the will of voters. The indictment says that Trump and others “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump.” The indictment outlines eight ways the defendants are accused of obstructing the election, in Georgia including attempts to steal voter data and tamper with voting equipment, lying to the Georgia state legislature about claims of voter fraud and creating fake pro-Trump electors, and, of course, the now-infamous phone call in which he urged the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes”, the number he would have needed to win the state. Now, the fake electors might need explaining. American presidents, and vice presidents, are not actually directly elected by the American people but by an electoral college. This is composed of electors from the 50 US states and the District of Columbia, the number representing each state tenuously linked to the state’s population. And except for Maine and Nebraska, the presidential candidate that wins the popular vote in the state, no matter the size of the majority, wins all the elector votes in the electoral college (Maine and Nebraska electors cast their votes proportionally). It is these electors that Trump and his co-conspirators tried to take over. In fact, Michigan and Arizona were targeted too.
Now what do these charges all have in common? For me, the common factor and the key factor is power: gaining power, holding onto power, and exercising power – at any price. And the Atlanta grand jury indictment shows just how extensive the plot to ensure power goes, and how far to the Right the Republicans have travelled, with Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time of the election, as well as a former senior Justice Department official and the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party all implicated. I also think it is not hyperbole to say that democracy and America itself is on trial – the constitution and the institutions of democracy cannot be so brazenly attacked, and the peaceful transfer of power must be a given if democracies are to function. So, there is a lot at stake. And it is right that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators should face trial. But I’m going to go back into history to show the dangers of putting a man like Trump on trial. And I’m going to use a man like Trump – Hitler – to show what can happen.
First, what led to Hitler’s trial, and as you listen to the coup, you might want to think back on the events of January 6th 2021.
In 1923 Hitler attempted a coup – he attempted to seize control of Bavaria before moving on Berlin. On the evening of November 8th, 1923, Gustav Kahr, the Bavarian Prime Minister, and two other leading members of his administration, General von Lossow, commander of the Bavarian Army and Colonel von Seisser, head of the state police force (Germany, like America, was and is a federal state), were addressing a meeting in a Munich beer hall (back then beer halls were often used for political meetings). In order to seize control of the meeting and of the Bavarian government, Hitler arrived at the beer hall with six hundred stormtroopers. The stormtroopers surrounded the beer hall and mounted a machine gun inside at its entrance. Hitler then stormed into the hall waving a gun and fired a shot into the ceiling to silence the crowded room. The meeting was stopped as Hitler took Kahr and the other two at gun point into a side room.
Kahr, von Lossow and Colonel von Seisser were threatened that if they didn’t join him in the revolution, and accept the posts he offered them, then he would shoot all three of them, and then himself. However, they resolutely refused to be bullied into something they clearly did not support. At this point, the crowded hall needed reassuring and Hitler went back into the hall and simply announced that the three had joined him in forming a new national government. Hitler would head the government and General Ludendorff, the WW1 hero, would take over the leadership of the Army which, Hitler assured them, would back him, adding that both the police and the army in Munich were already on their side.
It was all sheer bluff. Nothing that the crowd had been told was true. Hitler was no more in a position to seize control of Munich, never mind Germany, as anyone else in the crowd. Nevertheless, he cried out, ‘I can say this to you, either the German Revolution begins tonight, or we will all be dead by dawn!’ It was dramatic stuff.
Someone was sent to bring Ludendorff to the beer hall. Hitler and Ludendorff and Kahr, Lossow and Seisser now all returned to the meeting and all pledged their support of the coup. The meeting broke up convinced that a coup was underway. However, at this point Hitler received news of a clash between an armed group associated with the Nazis and regular troops at an army barracks and he felt he needed to personally take control of the situation. So, he left the triumvirate in the hands of Ludendorff. However, Ludendorff naively let all three of them go, accepting their word that they needed to go in order to ensure the success of the coup, something they had no intention of doing. Ludendorff had fallen victim to his own code of honour.
But little was being done elsewhere to secure the coup’s success. Only Rohm, heading a contingent of storm troopers, had captured a strategic target, the Army headquarters at the War Ministry. The barracks hadn’t been seized, nor the telegraph office, and the army moved to suppress it and by dawn, troops had surrounded the War Ministry.
At this point, with Hitler back at the beer hall, Ludendorff suggested an alternative plan. He and Hitler would march at the head of their supporters to the centre of the city and take it over. Ludendorff was convinced that no soldier nor the police (who were mostly ex-soldiers anyway) would fire on him, ‘The heavens will fall before the Bavarian Reichswehr turns against me!’ Such was the esteem he thought he still had. And this is what they did, marching out of the gardens of the beer hall at the head of 3,000 storm troopers. Ludendorff was dressed in his Imperial Army uniform, Hitler waved his revolver, the storm troopers were armed with rifles, some with bayonets fixed, and there was a truck with machine guns at the ready. And they had hostages, including two Bavarian cabinet ministers. This got them through the cordon of police guarding the Ludwig Bridge which they needed to cross.
But when they met a second cordon of police near the War Ministry (where Rohm and his men were still surrounded by regular troops in a stand-off), the police stood firm. As is understandable in such events, it is unclear which side fired the first shot, but shots were fired on both sides and sixteen Nazis and three policemen were killed, many more wounded. The marchers had been linked arm in arm to each other. The man linked to Hitler’s left was killed (oh how history could have been so different), Goering was badly wounded. Hitler dislocated his shoulder as he fell to the floor. The marchers fled, all except for Ludendorff who stood his ground. Hitler would be arrested two days later. Ludendorff was arrested on the spot. Goering was smuggled across the border into Austria. Rohm surrendered at the War Ministry.
And so, to the trial. Hitler and another nine leaders of the attempted coup, including Ludendorff, were duly put on trial. Hitler had been tried and convicted before, for violently disrupting a rival Party’s meeting in September, 1941. He served a month in prison and was warned by the police that any future incident would lead to him being deported back to Austria (Hitler was Austrian). So, he might have felt threatened by the trial. But Hitler knew that he could implicate numerous Bavarian politicians in the coup, and that at the very least, he could embarrass Kahr, Lossow and Seisser. Besides, he had the legendary Ludendorff beside him in the dock.
Hitler also knew it was an opportunity to present himself as the national hero, and not only on a national stage, but an international one. And here, begins the warning about what might happen when Trump does go to trial. For the trial – and it was to last twenty-four days – had attracted press from across Germany and beyond. Hitler had the platform he had wanted for so long, a platform to present his own views, and those of his Party; and to show the weakness of those in power.
And boy, did Hitler seize his opportunity. His opening statement lasted four hours! He was given cart blanche to interrupt as often as he pleased, cross-examine witnesses and speak in his own defence at any time and for any length. He readily admitted his intent to overthrow the state but declared, ‘There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918’ (a reference to those who had signed the Armistice that ended WW1). And as for the attempted coup in Munich, he accused Kahr, von Lossow and von Seisser, all witnesses for the prosecution, of being just as guilty as he and the others in the dock. And he gave a first public insight into the sense of destiny, a sense of providence, that he was to hold onto almost to the very end: ‘The man who is born to be a dictator is not compelled. He wills it. He is not driven forward, but drives himself. There is nothing immodest about this…. The man who feels called upon to govern a people has no right to say, “If you want me or summon me, I will co-operate.” No! It is his duty to step forward.’
In his closing speech, though spoken directly to the judges, his words were for all of Germany to hear:
‘For it is not you, gentlemen, who pass judgment on us. That judgment is spoken by the eternal court of history. What judgment you will hand down I know. But the court will not ask us, “Did you commit high treason or did you not?” That court will judge us, the Quarter Master General of the old Army [Ludendorff], his officers and soldiers, as Germans who wanted only the good of their own people and Fatherland, who wanted to fight and die. You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over, but the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to tatters the brief of the state prosecutor and the sentence of this court. For she acquits us.’
Nine of the ten accused were found guilty but only sentenced to a maximum of five years’ imprisonment, and eligible for parole after serving just six months. This, when the charge for which they were tried, and found guilty – ‘… attempts to alter by force the constitution of the German Reich or of any German state …’ – carried a life sentence. The court’s rationale was that they ‘were led in their action by a pure patriotic spirit and the most noble will.’ The sentences were carried out on April 1st, 1924. Hitler was released from prison on December 20th. He had been held in the old fortress of Landsberg overlooking the River Lech, in a room of his own with a wonderful view. Ludendorff was acquitted.
Years later, in 1935, Chancellor Hitler had the bodies of the sixteen Nazis killed in the putsch exhumed and replaced in vaults in the Feldherrnhalle (the Field Marshall’s Hall)) in Munich which became a national shrine. In dedicating the memorial Hitler said, ‘They now pass into German immortality. Here they stand for Germany and keep guard over our people. Here they lie as true witnesses of our people.’ Hitler may have become Chancellor, but he was still the arch propagandist.
I’m not suggesting for a second that Trump should not face justice for what unfolded after the 2020 election, but there are stark warnings for America to learn from Hitler’s attempted coup and his trial. America is already divided and that division will only become even more bitter when Trump faces justice. We might also question whether, like Hitler, who also tried to tear up the constitution and overthrow a democratically elected government, will Trump, in fact, face justice? How, in such a divided America, can an unbiased jury be found? If any of the cases make it to the Supreme Court, given the politicization of that court, what would their final judgement be? That Trump was protecting America? To paraphrase the German court, that he was ‘led in his action by a pure patriotic spirit and the most noble will’? And how will America respond? What will happen on the streets? What will happen in the 2024 election? And will that election have a peaceful outcome? It’s frightening for America and, like it or not, with America the leader of the West, the liberal-democratic world, it’s frightening for all of us.
Lessons from Hitler – the danger of not putting Trump on trial
Now in this second episode in my little series called “Lessons from Hitler”, I’m going to consider the argument for stopping someone like Hitler, someone with utter disregard for the values of liberal democracy, someone such as a Trump or a Putin. I’m not going to focus on the way in which Hitler dragged everyone into another world war, nor the evil that was the Holocaust, maybe these will be subjects for future episodes. What I want to focus on here is how Hitler so easily destroyed democracy in Germany.
I have to say at the outset that democracy was new to Germany in 1933 when Hitler gained the chancellorship and was already in serious trouble. And these are important considerations, because democracy doesn’t just magically work, we have to make it work. And for that to happen, we have to value it. If we don’t – watch out! Hitler took only a matter of months before replacing liberal democracy with a one-party, racist, militarist, authoritarian state.
Hitler was made chancellor of Germany on January 30th 1933 but Hitler’s position as Chancellor was reliant on Hindenburg as President. Hindenburg appointed him and Hindenburg could sack him. And the Nazis, though the biggest party in the Reichstag, the German parliament, did not have a majority, and a two-thirds majority was required to make any changes to the constitution. Not only that, they were in a clear minority in the Cabinet. But Göring had been made Minister of the Interior for Prussia, by far Germany’s biggest state, and it gave him control of the police. The Nazis also had their stormtroopers, the SA which, with a membership of around two and a half million, was considerably larger than the army. Besides, the old guard needed Hitler and the Nazis more than they needed the old guard, and ultimately, the Nazis had the ultimate key factor: Hitler.
Hitler’s first move was to strengthen his position in the Reichstag. This would, in turn, strengthen his position with regard to the Cabinet and with Hindenburg. A new election was called for March 1933. The Nazis wanted to win a huge majority so that they could make the changes to the constitution that they wanted. And a huge victory could be expected. They now had control of the state apparatus.
Early in February Hindenburg agreed to a decree that would supposedly ensure that the elections were fair. The police had to be notified of all election meetings forty-eight hours in advance. This was supposedly to allow the police to make sure they passed off without any trouble. However, in effect it allowed the Nazi-controlled police to ban the meetings of rivals or else it gave advance warning of rival’s meetings enabling the Nazis to use the SA to break them up. This was helped when, near the end of February, Göring set up an auxiliary police force made up of 25,000 SA men and 15,000 SS men. Newspapers, which had already been prevented from criticising the government, but which nevertheless supported rival parties, faced persistent temporary bans (maybe just a few days but enough to disrupt the messages they were trying to give the voters), the socialist papers were permanently banned and the police turned a blind eye to the thuggery of the SA who were set loose on the communists with no restraints.
Then, on February 27th, just a week before the election, a young Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, set the Reichstag on fire. The Nazis seized on the opportunity “Lady Luck” had handed them. Though there was no evidence to suggest anything other than van der Lubbe was acting alone, the Nazis claimed there was a communist plot to take over the country.
Hitler asked Hindenburg to pass a special decree: the Decree for the Protection of People and State. It sounds as if it is a good thing – protecting people and state – but in fact it destroyed civil rights in Germany: rights such as freedom of speech (even the privacy of private correspondence and telephone calls), freedom of the press, the right to hold meetings or the right to protest; whilst homes could be searched, arrests could be made and the victims held without trial. What is more, no matter that it was an emergency act, it destroyed those rights for the life of Nazi Germany. And though it didn’t formally ban the Communist Party and they were able to contest the election where they could, it led to an immediate purge on leading communists. Their newspapers were closed down, their meetings were broken up and up to four thousand communists were rounded up and thrown in jail.
In the election, the Nazis received more votes than they had ever done before, yet they still fell short of the two-third’s majority they needed in the Reichstag if they were to change the constitution legally. They joined forces with the other Right-wing party, the Nationalists, they banned the Communist Party, but they still needed a climate of fierce intimidation to get the Reichstag to pass an Enabling Act which enabled Hitler to make laws without going to the Reichstag or to President Hindenburg for their approval. They did this by surrounding the assembly with armed SA and SS men. With its passing, parliamentary democracy was trampled into the dirt by Hitler. Hitler was now able to govern alone.
From this point, things moved at breath-taking speed in a policy called Gleichschaltung (meaning co-ordination or bringing into line). It was a policy designed to create a National-Socialist state in which every aspect of social, economic and political life would fall under Nazi control.
On April 7th the Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service purged the civil service of Jews and anyone suspected of opposing the Nazis. Many civil servants tried to prove their allegiance by quickly joining the Nazi Party. On May 1st the Nazis, somewhat surprisingly, declared the internationally traditional labour day, a holiday but the following day trade union premises were occupied by the SS and SA, their funds were confiscated, their leaders arrested, and all free trade unions were duly banned and replaced by the Nazi Labour Front which would in future represent workers. Workers received work-books. These were records of employment and another means of controlling workers because employment depended on producing one. Strikes were made illegal and any workers who gave trouble would be sent to the new concentration camps for political re-education.
State governors had already been created in April, 1933 and in January, 1934 the Lander or state governments and the Landtage (state parliaments), which were responsible for things like policing and education, were abolished and replaced by governors who were appointed directly by Hitler and responsible to the Minister of the Interior. They appointed, and could dismiss, state officials, and they also had the power to make state laws. So, the Nazis now controlled the states.
Hitler had announced in March that a concentration camp for political prisoners would be opened at Dachau, just outside Munich, and two days later the first prisoners were trucked in, Communists and some Social Democrat officials too. The Communist Party was already banned and, in May, the Social Democratic Party had its assets seized, including property it owned, and in June its deputies were banned from taking up their seats. All their meetings all their publications were banned and no public office could be held by party members. The party was banned in all but name. in July, the Law against the Formation of Parties made the Nazi Party the sole legal party in Germany. In the November election, the second election of 1933, the Nazis polled 95% of the vote with about three million ballot papers spoilt in protest.
Gleichschaltung reached out into society too so that everything was Nazified. From youth clubs (though not at first those associated with the Catholic Church), to sports clubs and societies, anything from a chess club to a choir.
Hitler had to move more carefully with one group though: German Catholics. But the Papacy had already agreed to the dissolution of the Catholic Centre Party when in July the Vatican signed a Concordat with the Nazi government. The Vatican recognised the new regime and promised that the Church would not interfere in German politics. In return, the Nazis promised that they would not interfere in the Catholic Church which included their roles in education and youth movements. It wouldn’t last long as Hitler would soon ban the Catholic Youth League and shut down Church schools, whilst in 1937 Pope Pius XI condemned Nazism as anti-Christian. But too late.
Now, think about the scale and the speed of what had happened. In just ten months, Hitler had made Germany a one-party state, had ended the federal system of government too. He had destroyed free trade unionism and, with it, workers’ rights, having already put an end to civil rights, and had reached out to control social life too. And what is more, had begun his attack on the Jewish community.
In dealing with opponents of the regime, Hitler made clear that there was no need for judicial proceedings – investigation and trial – the judgment of the Gestapo or the SS was sufficient for both proof of guilt as well as decisions regarding punishment, i.e. imprisonment or execution. He wanted a ruthless organisation totally dedicated to the Nazi movement and unrestrained by law, and with the SS and the Gestapo, that is exactly what he got.
Still, in 1935 the Nazis made changes to the Penal Code, which included an all-encompassing clause. This is what it said:
‘The law-maker cannot give a complete set of rules covering all situations which may occur in life; he therefore entrusts the judge with filling in the remaining gaps.’
And Hans Franc, at the time the Reich Commissioner for Justice, had this to say of judges in 1936:
‘It is not his duty to help to enforce a law superior to the national community [meaning Aryans] or to impose a system of universal values. His role is to safeguard the concrete order of the racial community, to eliminate dangerous elements, to prosecute all acts harmful to the community, and to arbitrate in disagreements between members of the community. The National Socialist ideology, especially as expressed in the Party programme and in the speeches of our leader, is the basis for interpreting legal sources.’
Whilst this is how Himmler (who would go on to oversee the Holocaust) described to the police law panel of the German Law Academy his method of working:
‘I worked on the assumption that it did not matter in the least if our actions were contrary to some paragraph in the law; in working for the Führer and the German people, I basically did that which my conscience and common sense told me was right. The fact that others were bemoaning ‘violations of the law’ was completely immaterial …’
In other words, even if you haven’t broken a law, if a Nazi-controlled court says you have done wrong, then you are guilty of doing wrong. Or if you were arrested, convicted and punished by the Gestapo or the SS, then as they are acting on behalf of Hitler and the national community, their actions, and so, your arrest, conviction and punishment, are entirely justified.
The judiciary was brought under Nazi control when judges were required to join the National Socialist League for the Maintenance of Law and take an oath of loyalty to Hitler. If they didn’t, and joining the League meant that they would be bound to uphold Nazi principles in court, they would be forced to resign. Some judges were removed anyway. A German Lawyers Front was also formed which meant that lawyers, whether for the prosecution or the defence, were also bound to uphold Nazi views.
In 1934 a new People’s Court was established. It tried all cases of treason. Judges whose loyalty to the Nazi movement was not in doubt were selected for the new court. Even so, Hitler would sometimes alter sentences if he thought they had been too lenient.
Hitler had it wrapped up. Germany would be made great again the Nazi way. And it would be a Germany only for Aryans and only for those who accepted the Nazi way. That is why Hitler is a warning for America (too late for Russia, though in truth, their experiment with democracy never got going).
Hitler’s Lesson for Putin
So, we come to Hitler’s lesson for Putin in my little series on “Lessons from Hitler”. Not that I think Putin ever needed any and, as I said last week, if he had a role model it would be Stalin (and one day we should take a look at Stalin).
Last week I showed how Hitler had run roughshod over the constitution and had seized full control of the state. However, before gleichschaltung had been quite completed, he had to face down a big problem from within his own ranks: there was growing tension between himself and Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA, and growing tension too between Röhm and the Army, either of which could topple Hitler. And so he faced it head-on.
The SA was formed by Hitler in 1921 and it was led by Ernst Röhm. By the 1930s they were some two to three million strong and so were a formidable force. They were a paramilitary organisation of stormtroopers (SA stood for Sturmabteilung and because of their uniform, they were often referred to as the Brown-shirts). They were the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
To begin with, they were mainly ex-soldiers. Indeed, the SA gave unemployed soldiers and other young men a role. Young unemployed men were attracted by the offer of a wage and the uniform. Many also admired the discipline and fighting qualities of the SA. In turn, the SA would come to play a role in bringing younger members into the party. During the 1920s, the Jugendbund (the forerunner of the Hitler Youth) was effectively the SA’s youth section for boys aged fourteen to eighteen.
They gave Hitler protection at his meetings by removing hecklers and any rowdy members of the audience. They also disrupted meetings of Hitler’s opponents, especially Communist meetings. Indeed, they often beat up opposition supporters. On the streets they were at the forefront in the fight against the communists. And they were used to intimidate Jews and to attack Jewish property.
The SA were amongst the most committed Nazis and they wanted the Nazi revolution to be completed. This meant they wanted a ‘second revolution’, not just taking over the state but carrying out the anti-capitalist policies in the Nazi party’s Twenty-Five Point Programme that Hitler had accepted. These included abolishing all unearned income, reducing the power of big business by nationalising some of the biggest companies, and taking over some major industries. They wanted greater equality amongst the classes too. But though Hitler had agreed to the inclusion of these socialist policies in the Party’s programme, it was only in order to attract working class support. Hitler’s aim had always been a ‘national’ revolution, a rebirth for Germany, most likely as a result of war, and a Germany for Germans. And the Left-wing of the party would lose Hitler the support of industrialists and businessmen that he had worked so hard to develop. And these are the people he would need on his side if Germany was to produce the weapons of war he would need to carry out his foreign policy aims. The SA had also become a problem for him with their continued violence which was worrying the traditional elites, the officer class in the army and the upper branches of the civil service, the judiciary, etc. Hitler could not run the risk of losing their support either.
Röhm, like Hitler, was a veteran of WW1. He had stood alongside Hitler in the Munich Beer Hall putsch but avoided imprisonment and so was able to keep the Nazi Party going whilst Hitler was in prison. But Röhm wanted the SA to merge with the Army and under his command. This would put Röhm in a position to oust Hitler as leader of the Party and so as Chancellor. And, of course, it also made the SA a threat to the Army’s independence and professionalism (and its membership vastly outnumbered the army which had been restricted to just 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles). They looked upon the SA as a rabble of thugs, but they treated the threat very seriously.
Röhm had already fallen out with Hitler over the SA’s future role back in 1924 and had left Germany for Bolivia, but when the SA was in danger of falling totally out of control, in 1930, Hitler asked Röhm to come back and instil the discipline that was desperately needed. Röhm succeeded in this but his success only made him a greater threat. Röhm’s manoeuvrings led Hitler to fear a military coup if he didn’t do something about it. And the likes of Himmler and Göring, who were jealous of Röhm’s power, encouraged Hitler to act.
On top of all this, Hindenburg was close to death and Hitler wanted to merge the positions of President and Chancellor which would require the Army’s support. He couldn’t let the situation worsen. He had to act, and act he did: ruthlessly.
What happened was that Hitler called a meeting of SA leaders in Wiessee in Bavaria for the weekend of June 29th-30th, 1934 and in what came to be known as the Night of the Long Knives, squads of SS men with Hitler in the lead raided the hotel where Röhm and other leaders of the SA were staying and arrested them (Hitler personally arrested Röhm). Some were dragged outside and shot. Rohm was taken back to Munich and put in Stadelheim Prison where he had been held after the Munich Beer Hall putsch. It is said that Hitler had given Rohm the opportunity to end his own life, giving orders for a gun to be left in his room, but when Rohm declined the offer, he too was shot on site.
Hitler took the opportunity to raid the homes of other potential threats too. Over the weekend somewhere between 200 and 400 others were arrested and executed or else shot in the process of the action. They included leaders of other parties and from amongst the traditional elite.
The threat of a coup led by Röhm was eliminated and the SA was brought directly under Hitler’s control. The SA would still have a role to play but the more disciplined SS would increasingly be the most significant military force within the Nazi movement. Hitler’s position was immeasurably strengthened as, in what was a totally illegal murderous action, Hitler won the gratitude of political elites, including Hindenburg, the army and the economic elite. There would be no ‘second revolution’. Hindenburg sent a telegram thanking Hitler for his ‘determined action and gallant personal intervention which had nipped treason in the bud and rescued the German people from great danger.’ Whilst the Defence Minister, Blomberg, issued a statement to the army that praised Hitler’s ‘soldierly determination and exemplary courage’. Hitler was now assured of all their support.
He told his Cabinet on July 3rd that ‘The example he had given would be a healthy lesson for the entire future. He had stabilized the authority of the government for all time.’ The Cabinet then agreed the draft law for the Emergency Defence of the State that read: ‘The measures taken on 30 June and 1 and 2 July for the suppression of high treasonable and state treasonable attacks are, as emergency defence of the state, legal.’
In a speech to the Reichstag on July 13th (now a chamber without any authority, a chamber consisting almost exclusively of Nazis, and a chamber without thirteen of its members after the events of June 30th-July 2nd), Hitler gave further justification for the events:
‘If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people.’
And he gave a chilling warning:
Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.’
Hitler had become the law.
Then, shortly after the Night of the Long Knives, on August 2nd Hindenburg died. Hitler had already arranged to merge the offices of Chancellor and President and he became Führer, Germany’s Supreme Leader. On the same day he had the Army swear an oath of loyalty not to the state or the office of President but to him personally:
‘I swear by God this scared oath: that I will render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler; the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath.’
This was done in ceremonies all over the country (suggesting that it, too, had been settled before Hindenburg’s death). The Army was Hitler’s. Total power was Hitler’s. And it was all confirmed in a plebiscite held on August 19th in which 95% of those who had registered, voted, and 90% of them, voted in favour.
So, what of Putin? How has he got rid of those who have threatened to get in his way? And let me repeat, he has not needed to take any lessons from Hitler. But I still think Hitler provides lessons for us to learn, certainly in America right now; but it’s far too late for Russia.
As well as imprisoning opponents on fabricated charges which I have talked about before, Putin has used the good old bullet, poisons and has now taken to downing planes. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who reported on human rights abuses and whose book, “Putin’s Russia,” accused him of turning the country into a police state, was killed outside her flat in Moscow. Five men were convicted of the murder, but the judge was also satisfied that it was a contract killing. Putin, of course, denied any Kremlin involvement. Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer known for representing Chechen’s in human rights cases against the Russian military and who also represented journalists who found themselves in legal trouble after writing articles critical of Putin, including Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in Sevastopol, Ukraine in 2009, along with Anastasia Baburova who was shot when she tried to help him. The Russian authorities claimed a neo-Nazi group was behind the killings, and two members were convicted of the deaths. Sure! And in 2015 Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition leader who had led massive street rallies in protest of the 2011 parliamentary election results and wrote reports on official corruption, was shot four times in the back, just hours after urging the public to join a march against Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine. Nobody has been held responsible even though (would it be cynical to say because) Putin took “personal control” of the investigation. In 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian who had fought against Russia during the second Chechen war in the early 2000s, was shot twice in the head at close range in central Berlin. A German court sentenced Vadim Krasikov, an alleged FSB agent, to life imprisonment for the crime. So, Putin’s reach is not confined to Russia.
And this will become more clear when we look at the use of poison to rid him of his opponents. Alexander Litvinenko, a former intelligence officer and whistleblower, died three weeks after drinking a cup of tea at a London hotel that had been laced with deadly polonium-210 in London in 2006. A British inquiry found that Litvinenko was poisoned by Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who were acting on orders that had ‘probably been approved'” by Putin. Russia refused to extradite them, and in 2015 the Russian president granted Lugovoi a medal for “services to the motherland.” And Boris Berezovsky, who accused Putin’s administration of being behind Litvinenko’s murder, was found dead at home in the UK where he was in self-exile having fallen out with Putin. He was in a locked bathroom with a noose around his neck in what was at first thought to be a suicide. However, the coroner’s office could not determine the cause of death.
And more than a decade later, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who had become a double agent for the UK, was poisoned with the nerve agent, novichok in Salisbury in England. He survived but Dawn Sturgess, who accidentally came into contact with the Novichok didn’t. And in August 2020, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. Navalny was flown to Germany for treatment, where doctors established that he had been poisoned with novichok. He is now, of course, in jail – we have talked about him befor. Now this choice of “weapon” was first developed in the Soviet era so there is an historic link here, but their development has continued and become more sophisticated under Putin.
And so it continues. In March this year, the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested for alleged espionage, a charge strongly rejected by Gershkovich, his paper and the American government all. This is the first American journalist to be arrested since 1986, when the country was still under Soviet communist rule. It is of grave concern for all Western journalists in Russia. And in April, opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for treason and spreading “false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine. His 25-year sentence was three times longer than any previously imposed for speaking out against the Russian invasion. And we should also consider the plight of those jailed, for example there are grave concerns about the treatment meted out to Alexei Navalny. Many fear he will die in jail. There was also the case of the father of 13-year-old Maria Moskalyova who was convicted of discrediting the Russian military and handed a two-year prison term, whilst his daughter was sent to the orphanage. He was detained in neighbouring Belarus when he attempted to flee. And, of course, there was, most recently, the downing of the private jet carrying the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin two months after he led an attempted coup against Putin’s regime.
This is what happens when there is no control over a regime and its leader. It happened in Germany in the 1930s and it’s happening in Russia today. Of course, it has happened elsewhere in the past, and is happening elsewhere today, and you will all know of examples. And it will happen again and again wherever and whenever democratic control is missing. Democracy is flawed, again, something to look at in a future episode, but it’s a dam sight better than handing over total control to an individual or a small group for abuse of that power will surely follow.
Why we should see Trump and Putin as fascists.
In this final episode in my little series called “Lessons from Hitler”, I’m going to take a look at fascism and compare Hitler’s Nazi Germany to Putin’s Russia and to Trumpism.
What are the principles of fascism?
National rebirth
A belief in racial superiority and a contempt for other races
A hatred of socialism and communism
A contempt for liberalism and democracy
So, the need for a powerful authoritarian state
The glorification of violence, war and conquest