Friday, March 04, 2016
Donald
Trump and Germany in the 1930s: Reflections After a Visit to Nuremberg
A photo of a display at the Documentation
Centre Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, Germany. (Photo: Holly Hayes/flickr/cc)
Nuremberg, a historic medieval city, was
widely known in the 1930s as the most pro-Nazi city in Germany. Last December
it was also the origin of a wonderful seven day cruise on the Danube River for
my wife and me. Conscious of its historical significance, we had come early to
see the city, especially to tour its World War II sites.
Nuremberg was the site of gigantic annual
rallies celebrating the Nazi Party and its Führer, Adolf Hitler. Our tour guide
Tom, a native of Nuremberg, began to open my eyes anew to the fanatical power
and charisma of Hitler. Tom took us first to the vast parade grounds and
reviewing stand before which in 1934 an astounding one million people assembled
rank on rank. To address his followers the Führer descended to the speaker’s
platform from a doorway above, “like an angel from heaven”, said our guide, to
proclaim “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer” (one people, one
nation, one leader).
Donald Trump announced last June his
candidacy for the Presidency, descending to similarly orchestrated acclaim on
an escalator at Trump Tower. Although the number of followers on that occasion
afford no comparison with Hitler’s masses, I did think of comparable egos.
Campaigning in Iowa in January, Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of
Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
We next visited Nuremberg’s Documentation
Center, a new museum whose four floors thoroughly document the crimes of the
Nazi era. As you go through the museum the Nazi posters, newsreels and
photographs of the era, recordings of interviews with prominent people and the
sound tracks of pumped up Nazi rallies give you a feel for the incredible
fervor of the time. Ordinary Germans, interviewed in the 1960s and 1970s,
admitted being swept up in the emotion. “Being at the Nazi rallies was the
thing to do,” said one. As Tom explained, the Nazi Party message was: “Put
yourself totally in our hands and you will be taken care of.“ Unless
you’re Jewish, communist, trade unionist, homosexual, gypsy, or mentally or
physically deficient, in which case…
How could the German people become so swept
up, so willing to be put on such a barbaric history track? Historians still
struggle to explain. But the punitive reparations demanded by the victorious
allies after World War I along with the severe economic depression of the 1920s
and early 1930s left Germans bitter and demoralized. Together with
Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the Nazi ideology began to provide
millions of disillusioned and desperate Germans with an explanation for their
plight, a focal point for their discontent, and hope for the future.
There seems to be a similar mood in America
today among many people who have been left out of an incomplete economic
recovery, scared of increased threats by ISIS and others, and threatened by the
increased presence and voices of people of color, immigrants, and those of other
religions. And the pace of economic and technological change is too fast and
bewildering for many more of us.
In such a climate Donald Trump develops his
presidential campaign with astounding success. His themes are strikingly
similar to those of Hitler and the Nazis of the 1930s:
On Mexican people: “They are sending people
that have lots of problems…they’re bringing drugs, crime and rapists”.
On Muslims entering the United States, Trump
would propose a total and complete shutdown. In South Carolina on Feb. 19,
Trump told a bizarre story, probably apocryphal: that Gen. John J. Pershing
shortly after the Spanish-American War (1898) used bullets dipped in pigs’
blood to execute dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines. Said Trump, the
moral of this story is that “We better start getting tough, and we better start
getting vigilant or we’re not going to have a country.”
Trump cheers at a rally when his supporters
physically tackle an African American protester, saying next day that “Maybe he
should’ve been roughed up”. On Feb. 27 he declined to disavow the support of
white nationalist and ex-Ku Klux Klan supporter David Duke.
In 1938 on Kristallnacht (The Night of
Broken Glass) hundreds of Jewish synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses
throughout Germany were destroyed along with many Jews beaten or killed by Nazi
SA thugs.
Trump mocks a disabled reporter for the New
York Times at a Nov. 25 rally.
Regarding our military: “We’ve gotta make our
military so strong, so big, so powerful, that nobody’s going to mess with us (a
line he frequently uses).”
At a rally in South Carolina Feb. 17, Trump
defends torture, saying “Waterboarding is fine but not nearly tough enough.”
He said also, “I think apologizing is a great
thing, but you have to be wrong. I will apologize if I’m ever wrong.”
Does some of this sound like Germany and its
leader in the 1930s?
Pastor Martin Niemöller, a German anti-Nazi
theologian and Lutheran pastor, is said to have spoken these prophetic words
after the war:
First they came for the
socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they
came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade
unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was
not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
The Nuremberg tour and my
contemplation of the Nazi horror confirmed for me in a visceral way the
dangerous situation we are facing in our country. More and more people seem
inclined to accept the words of this vicious and ego-driven man, whose
perspective on our nation and world have little relation to the values and
vision of the founders of this country.
A few weeks ago Pope Francis, responding to
Mr. Trump, indicated that Christians along with others should be building
bridges, not walls. Whether or not one sees in this dangerous demagogue an
incipient fascism, it is urgent that we heed Pastor Niemöller’s warning, and
decisively raise our voices in support of the Common Good, and for justice and
compassion for all.
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Richard W. Gillett is a
retired Episcopal priest, writer and labor activist. He lives in Seattle,
Washington.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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