Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany with only 43.9% of the vote. But...

[Lakhota]

Food for thought. It's a scary scenario that we should all keep in mind when we vote. What do you think?

 

[toobfreak]

Food for thought. It's a scary scenario that we should all keep in mind when we vote. What do you think?

I think states need to take Joe Biden off the ballot. He is unfit for the office.

 

[shockedcanadian]

I am trying to remember my history and if I am not mistaken he was elected in at least one of his elections (did he have more than one? I forget) with overwelming numbers. Blame the Treaty of Versaille. The French and British had an unrelenting attitude and it created broad anger in Germany tp the point that when France was attacked the gullible German people were giddy with the taste of revenge.

 

[Polishprince]

Even

View attachment 859050

Food for thought. It's a scary scenario that we should all keep in mind when we vote. What do you think?

In Germany in 1933, it is true that the national socialists had just 43% of the vote. But other ultraleft parties like the socialists and communists got 18% and 12%. So it was a consensus among the Krauts they wanted to go off the deep end.

 

[hadit]

View attachment 859050

Food for thought. It's a scary scenario that we should all keep in mind when we vote. What do you think?

I think that you Godwinned yourself on the very first post.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

I think states need to take Joe Biden off the ballot. He is unfit for the office.

I think that the mods need to take you off the USMB for being a useless troll who never actually contributes anything. You are unfit to exist among us

The OP is attempting to stimulate an adult discussion of history that is relevant to current events. Then you slither into the room with some irrelevant snark like some special ed juvenile delinquent intent on disrupting the class. It’s apparent that you function on an intellectual level that does not allow you to participate in any meaningful or civil discourse so you lash out at any convenient target putting you abysmal level of emotional maturity on full display

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

I think that you Godwinned yourself on the very first post.

No he didn't The comparison is valid. Listen to Hitler. Listen to Trump. He is not just trowing out rediculous lables like "Communist" and "Socialists" the wayTrump and his moronic minions do. And he did not say that Trump is a Nazi . He invited you to THINK. Can you THINK??

 

[luiza]

I think that you Godwinned yourself on the very first post.

A new find for me and it is cute .
The trouble is that my posts use the word Nazi to describe everybody I dislike which only leaves seven people and our cat Adolph. And I am not that keen on them , particularly my partner whom I always address as Hitler or Adolf two point zero . He calls me his Little Eva .Smart arse .

 

[luiza]

I think that the mods need to take you off the USMB for being a useless troll who never actually contributes anything. You are unfit to exist among us

The OP is attempting to stimulate an adult discussion of history that is relevant to current events. Then you slither into the room with some irrelevant snark like some special ed juvenile delinquent intent on disrupting the class. It’s apparent that you function on an intellectual level that does not allow you to participate in any meaningful or civil discourse so you lash out at any convenient target putting you abysmal level of emotional maturity on full display

Why beat around the bush ? Go ahead and tell us what you really think

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

View attachment 859050

Food for thought. It's a scary scenario that we should all keep in mind when we vote. What do you think?

The continuing saga of "Everyone I disagree with is literally Hitler or a Nazi"
Season 50, Episode 328 : On this episode The loons try and convince everyone else with a brain that if they don't vote the way the lunatics want you are going to lose "Muh Democracy"

 

[Hellbilly]

I think that you Godwinned yourself on the very first post.

The thread is about Hitler.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Why beat around the bush ? Go ahead and tell us what you really think

Holy shit you again!!?? Are you stalking me ? Obsessed with me. I always say what I think when the time is right You’re the one who bets around the bush with snarky barba and ad hominems . I think that there are valid comparisons to be mad between what happened in 1930’s and what is happening here and now

 

[hadit]

No he didn't The comparison is valid. Listen to Hitler. Listen to Trump. He is not just trowing out rediculous lables like "Communist" and "Socialists" the wayTrump and his moronic minions do. And he did not say that Trump is a Nazi . He invited you to THINK. Can you THINK??

TRUMP! and Hitler are not synonymous. TRUMP! is not going to conquer surrounding nations, he's not going to ship anyone off to concentration camps, he's not going to launch the world into another war. That's all ludicrous. Godwin wins again.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

I think that the mods need to take you off the USMB for being a useless troll who never actually contributes anything. You are unfit to exist among us

The OP is attempting to stimulate an adult discussion of history that is relevant to current events. Then you slither into the room with some irrelevant snark like some special ed juvenile delinquent intent on disrupting the class. It’s apparent that you function on an intellectual level that does not allow you to participate in any meaningful or civil discourse so you lash out at any convenient target putting you abysmal level of emotional maturity on full display

But he is correct where you are nothing but democrat dribble.

 

[hadit]

The thread is about Hitler.

Oh, then any comparison to today is invalid. Good to know.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

But he is correct where you are nothing but democrat dribble.

Of course you would say that . You and he are exactly alike, And the word that you are grasping for is "drivel" not dribble you illiterate moron

 

[Hellbilly]

Oh, then any comparison to today is invalid. Good to know.

Whatever helps you sleep at night

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

TRUMP! and Hitler are not synonymous. TRUMP! is not going to conquer surrounding nations, he's not going to ship anyone off to concentration camps, he's not going to launch the world into another war. That's all ludicrous. Godwin wins again.

Perhaps not , But he does intend to destroy our constitutional republic and install himself as the supreme leader. He has told us so in as many words. Are you to fucking stupid to understand that? Or, is it that you want what he is selling but pretend that you don't believe it because you do not have guts to admit it?

 

[Hellbilly]

TRUMP! and Hitler are not synonymous.

No they aren’t. They are similar. Hitler and Columbus are synonymous.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

TRUMP! and Hitler are not synonymous. TRUMP! is not going to conquer surrounding nations, he's not going to ship anyone off to concentration camps, he's not going to launch the world into another war. That's all ludicrous. Godwin wins again.

There are more similarities than differences between Hiler and Trump in terms of their rhetoric, methods and ambitions. Trump may not be inclined to attack neighbors of try to conquer the world, but he is no less dangerous, albeit in his own way , And don’t forget, he is in favor of using the military against Mexican drug cartels on Mexican soil without Mexico’s permission. He also mused about the use of nuclear weapons clearly not understanding the gravity of that possibility. As for concentration camps, read to the end. He is a clear and present danger to democracy and humanity. Perhaps not in the same way as Hitler, but not to be scoffed at either

Below is an annotated timeline of Hitlers rise to power with notation where Trumps words or deeds parallel Hitlers

Hitler's Rise to Power: A Timeline (thoughtco.com)

Note: Some entries on Hitlers time line that do not seen to be relevant to Trump have been hidden for the sake of space and clarity. All dates can be seen by clicking on the link above

1919

March 23: Benito Mussolini forms the National Fascist Party in Italy. Its success will be a huge influence on Hitler.

Trump inspires the MAGA movement with clear Fascist characteristics such as racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, class warfare and censorship

.

September 12: Hitler joins the German Workers’ Party, having been sent to spy on it by the military.

Trump has tried to use the military for political purposes and to intimidate enemies, and will again if given the chance

1920
February 24: Hitler becomes increasingly important to the German Workers’ Party thanks to his speeches. The group declares a Twenty-Five Point Program to transform Germany.

Trump, like Hitler, harnesses the anger and malcontent of the masses, whips them into a frenzy and has them believe that he is on their side.

1921
July 29: Hitler is able to become chairman of his party, which is renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP.

The only difference between Trump and Hitler is that Hiler paid lip service to socialism while Trump vilifies it and conflates it with Marxism. The fact is that Hiler was a socialist in name only. Both pander to wealthy industrialists while push their brand of Nationalist Racism and playing to the masses’ fears about the “others”

Trump may not be chairman of the Republican Party but clearly has a strangle hold on it

1922
October 30: Mussolini manages to turn luck and division into an invitation to run the Italian government. Hitler notes his success.

Trump is known for fawning over dictators such as Putin, Xi, Kim and Orban and wanting to emulate them

1923
January 27: Munich holds the first Nazi Party Congress.
November 9: Hitler believes the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, the support of WW1 leader Erich Ludendorff, and browbeaten locals, he stages the Beer Hall Putsch. It fails.

Trump believed that Jan 6 2021 was the fight time for a coup

1924
April 1: Having turned his trial into a grandstand for his ideas and become known across Germany, Hitler is given a derisory five-month prison sentence.

Trump is intent on turning his trials into a platform for his grievances and ideology

1925
February 27: The NSDAP had moved away from Hitler's influence during his absence; now free, he reasserts control, determined to pursue a notionally legal course to power.\

The 2024 Trump campaign is dominating the Republican Party

April 5: Presian, aristocratic, right-leaning war leader Paul von Hindenburg is elected president of Germany.

Trump pushed for the election of far right theocratic Mike Johnson as speaker of the house

July: Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf," a ranting exploration of what passes as his ideology.

Trump rants on social media and at his rallies. (Hitler also had rallies)

November 9: Hitler forms a personal bodyguard unit separate from the SA, known as the SS.

Trump has been known to fantasize about having a private army and has said that he would use the FBI as his personal police force and the DOJ to go after political enemies

1928
May 20: Elections to the Reichstag yield just 2.6 percent of the vote to the NSDAP.1 (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)

Trump has never gotten the popular vote either

1930
January 23: Wilhelm Frick becomes the interior minister in Thuringia, the first Nazi to hold a notable position in the German government.

Trump supports and is supported by the far right House Freedom Caucus

March 30: Heinrich Brüning takes charge of Germany via a right-leaning coalition. He wishes to pursue a deflationary policy to counter economic depression.

Trump uses inflation as a wedge issue and exaggerates the negative aspects of the economy as a weapon against opponents

July 16: Facing defeat over his budget, Brüning invokes Article 48 of the constitution, which allows the government to pass laws without Reichstag consent. It is the start of a slippery slope for failing German democracy, and the start of a period of rule by Article 48 decrees.

Trump has said that he would suspend or tear up the constitution and consolidate power into the office of the President. He will likely have willing enablers in congress and the courts by 2025

September 14: Boosted by the rising unemployment rate, the decline of center parties, and a turn to both left and right extremists, the NSDAP wins 18.3 percent of the vote and becomes the second-largest party in the Reichstag.2

Trump fuels the fire of hyper partisanship for his own political gain. Like Hitler, he capitalizes on social and economic grievances and blames, vilifies and dehumanizes minorities

1931
October: The Harzburg Front is formed to try to organize Germany’s right wing into a workable opposition to the government and the left. Hitler joins

Trump has ties to the Proud Boys, the oath Keepers and numerous far right, uber conservative think tanks and political activist groups

January: Hitler is welcomed by a group of industrialists; his support is broadening and gathering money.

Here we see that like Hitler, the well to do love Trump because he has got their back

March 13: Hitler comes a strong second in the presidential elections; Hindenburg just misses out on the election on the first ballot.

April 10: Hindenburg defeats Hitler at the second attempt to become president.

Like Hitler Trump is mostly a loser

August 13: Papen offers Hitler the post of vice-chancellor, but Hitler refuses, accepting nothing less than being chancellor.

Like Trump , Hitler could never accept being subservient in any way. An enormous ego and likely narcistic like trump

August 31: Hermann Göring, long a leading Nazi and a link between Hitler and the aristocracy, becomes president of the Reichstag and uses his new power to manipulate events.

Like Hitler, Trump panders to Oligarchs for funding with pretending to be a populist for the people in order to maintain a broad base of support

November 21: Hitler turns down more government offers, wanting nothing less than to be chancellor.

December 2: Papen is forced out, and Hindenburg is influenced into appointing the general, and prime right-wing manipulator, Kurt von Schleicher, chancellor.

My note: Here we have a gap in the time line , specifically 1932 when significant events took place. Here is a synopsis some of which is consistent with events in 1933 that are described here and help to explain how Hitler achieved absolute power. Source Adolf Hitler becomes president of Germany | August 19, 1934 | HISTORY

In 1932, German President Paul von Hindenburg, old, tired, and a bit senile, had won re-election as president but had lost a considerable portion of his right/conservative support to the Nazi Party. (Joe Biden ?) Those close to the president wanted a cozier relationship to Hitler and the Nazis. Hindenburg had contempt for the Nazis’ lawlessness but ultimately agreed to oust his chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, for Franz von Papen, who was willing to appease the Nazis by lifting the ban on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and unilaterally canceling Germany’s reparation payments, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the close of World War I.

But Hitler was not appeased. He wanted the chancellorship for himself. Papen’s policies failed on another front: His authoritarian rule alienated his supporters, and he too was forced to resign. He then made a common cause with Hitler, persuading President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor and himself vice-chancellor.

Of course this would not happen in the US as we have a very different form of government. However, it does speak to the way in which both Trump and Hitler manipulate the system using grievance and intimidation to achieve their goals. Here is more:

But that was not enough for Hitler either. In February 1933, Hitler blamed a devastating Reichstag fire on the communists (its true cause remains a mystery) and convinced President Hindenburg to sign a decree suspending individual and civil liberties, a decree Hitler used to silence his political enemies with false arrests.

Trump has displayed considerable contempt for civil liberties for those who oppose him, as well as a willingness to blame others for that which he is guilty of,

Back to the timeline:

1933
January 30: Schleicher is outmaneuvered by Papen, who persuades Hindenburg than Hitler can be controlled; the latter is made chancellor, with Papen vice-chancellor.

So, here we see that Hitler was indeed not elected, and like Trump, there was concerns about controlling him February

6: Hitler introduces censorship

Trump and the Maga Republicans promote censorship in libraries and classrooms as well as in the press

February 27: With elections looming, the Reichstag is set on fire by a communist.

With certification of the election looming , the Capital is ransacked at the behest of Trump

February 28: Citing the attack on the Reichstag as evidence of a mass communist movement, Hitler passes a law ending civil liberties in Germany.

March 5: The NSDAP, riding on the communist scare and aided by a now tame police force boosted by masses of SA, polls at 43.9 percent.4 The Nazis ban the communists.

Trump is no fan of civil liberties or opposition parties, especially Communists who, to him are everyone who is not MAGA

March 21: During the "Day of Potsdam," the Nazis open the Reichstag in a carefully stage-managed act which tries to show them as heirs of the Kaiser.

March 24: Hitler passes the Enabling Act; it makes him a dictator for four years.

Trump would love to do the same

July 14: With other parties banned or splitting up, the NSDAP becomes the only political party

Trump and the MAGA Republicans continuously attempt to delegitimize any opposition and have suggested that the Demarcate Party be banned. Likewise he shows profound contempt for the free press when criticized by it.

1934
June 30: During the "Night of the Long Knives," dozens are killed as Hitler shatters the power of the SA, which had been challenging his goals. SA leader Ernst Röhm is executed after trying to merge his force with the army.\

July 3: Papen resigns.

August 2: Hindenburg dies. Hitler merges the posts of chancellor and president, becoming the supreme leader of Nazi Germany.

In conclusion , As the result of deaths, resignations, an opportune turn of events and the suppression of the opposition by brute force, Hitler was able to seize absolute power. Could Trump do the same? To answer that question, we need only to turn to the highly publicized plan for 2025 touted by Trump himself

How Trump could further damage democracy in a second presidential term (msnbc.com)

The New York Times published an article Monday that found that Trump and his allies are buzzing with ways he could use a radical interpretation of “unitary executive theory” to amass unprecedented power as president. That theory contends that the president holds total control of the executive branch, and it rejects constraints on presidential power such as Justice Department independence and congressional regulations on executive branch agencies.

Many of these measures would be met by fierce legal challenges. But the unmistakable goal is, as the Times put it, “to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”

There are two particularly noteworthy takeaways from this report. One is that this level of planning suggests that a second Trump term could do a lot more damage than the first in degrading democracy.

The second noteworthy point is that this effort seems to have the potential to bleed well beyond Trump. Project 2025 isn’t designed only for Trump, but for any Republican who could win the White House.
______________________________________________________--

Trumps 2021 insurrection attempt failed, in large part, because people loyal to the constitution, in key positions, from the DOJ to state governments, as well as military leaders and judges, stood up to him There is no guarantee that that would be the case the next time around if he makes good on his promise to install absolute loyalists as department heads and replace career civil servants with his yes men

And there is the danger that key players at the state level, such as the moderate governors secretaries of state who helped the guard rails hold on 2021. could be replaced by the voters with ultra MAGA loyalists

Remember too, that he has said that he would invoke the insurrection act and his inauguration day and use the military to quell protests. He has also stated that he would use the military to round up hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants into concentration camps. The degree to which the military leaders would be complicit is, of course key. They are professionals who are trained to resist illegal orders. However , keep in mind that the President appoints the Secretary of Defense as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is the Secretary who has direct operational command of the services, while the Joint Chiefs have an advisory role. The wrong people in those roles could result in a military dictatorship, especially given the fact that the ranks of the services are inundated with MAGA sympathizers

The last line of defense is the judiciary. While they held the line, and smacked down the election fraud claims there is no certainty that would again be the case. Those cases did not get to SCOTUS, be next time they might, and SCOTUS is now skewed to the far right.

History informs us that democracies are fragile and efemeral, and that the default position is authoritarianism. We would be wise to not forget that fact