Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
July 27, 2016

As I recently read some of the Rabbinic tales that came out of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, I explored what social conditions in Germany allowed for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party.
 
In the 1930s, the feeling of the German people was grim and in some cases desperate. The worldwide depression hit Germany and millions were out of work. Staggering inflation decimated the economy. The government was viewed as impotent. Only fifteen years in their past was the end of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, a particularly humiliating agreement for Germany. The terms of the agreement forced Germany to accept responsibility for the war, make huge reparation payments, severely limit its military, and the return all annexed territory. The treaty was the source of great discontent and public shame.
 
All of these conditions - economic and political - set the stage for the rise of Hitler and his National Socialist party. He was a powerful speaker and charismatic leader. He made sweeping promises to fix every ill and restore the position and honor of a glorious Germany in the world. He maximized an atmosphere of fear and rage to accomplish his ends. And he did this primarily by defining insiders and outsiders and positioning them against one another.
 
The Nazis were especially attractive to the unemployed, young people and the lower middle class. Hitler was especially beloved by the working class, small store owners, lower level employees and farmers. Before the Great Depression the Nazi party was hardly known. By 1932 the Nazis won 33 percent of the votes, exceeding any other party. That same year Hitler was appointed chancellor. All of the chess pieces were in place to create an authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist regime.
 
Many Germans believed they had found a savior for them and their country. They slowly ceded all authority to Hitler and the Nazis in the hopes that they would create a better day, a new Reich. And then, incrementally, the Nazis rose to power and began the process of expanding their territory and influence through military means, constructing alliances to dominate the world, systematically limiting all rights and freedoms of their own people, relentlessly assassinating the character, careers and lives of all dissenters, expelling all those seen as outsiders, and pursuing a genocide the likes of which the world has never seen since.
 
How could this happen? Set the right combination of social conditions in place and the citizens of a country will hand over their rights and the rights of others in the hopes of a better day, a better day in which everyone has what they need, all the threats are vanquished, and national pride is reestablished.
 
Give me the power, said Hitler, and I will take care of all that for you. And so he did.

 

@Timothy Carson 2016

 

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