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January 11, 2013 at 11:25 am
The larger matter is that they, and most Americans, have no idea how Hitler and the Nazis took power and then took over Europe. They would have had to have read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which is way too thick a book. William Shirer laid it out. The Germans in Weimar Germany were essentially complicit in Hitler’s rise to dictatorship. There was a lassitude and weakness in the democratic political parties and he exploited that over years. The Nazis, before he became absolute ruler, never attained a popular clear majority in any vote. They would win but never get enough percentage to get away from second referendum votes. Plus, it never really mattered in the conquered countries, particularly in the East — but everywhere in Europe, how heavily armed individuals may or may not have been. Partisan movements were crushed, all opposition was. People were slaughtered en masse for the entire duration of the war in the occupied lands due to Nazi dictates and reprisals. Armed opposition, and sometimes there was some, never made a difference. No one could fight the SS and the Wehrmacht. I suppose this gun delusion also ties in with the general ignorance about WWII in which many Americans actually think the US was solely responsible for winning the war. They’ve no realization that the Soviet Union was responsible for the destruction of most of the Reich’s armies. And what the actual cost was, which was terrible, even though they were armed to the teeth. The gun right has this manic fantasy, one that’s now become dangerous to the rest of us, that they’re a modern patriotic amateur army ready to jump into action to save the country from a dictator. It is hard to think of anything more toxic or destructive to a civil society. The Democrats share blame, too. They’re weak and virtually never stand up to the spread of this deeply malevolent thought because of cowardice towards the gun lobby.
January 11, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Today, I heard a clip from All in the Family from 40 years ago in which Archie Bunker repeated the “Hitler took the guns” lie. It’s one of those zombie lies that just goes on.
Read Shirer a long time ago. Great book. I don’t think that any of his analysis has been seriously challenged since.