Arkady
President
Lately I've been reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." It's a brilliantly well-written history of Nazi Germany. So far, I'm still in the early stages, but already it has filled in lots of blanks in my understanding of the era. Previously, I'd known some of the big landmarks of the early history of the party, but I didn't know or appreciate the detailed strategies that went into taking the Nazi party from very humble origins to absolute national dominance.
One of Hitler's strengths was his recognition that a successful power grab would need the enthusiastic support of at least some existing power structures, and at least the tacit acceptance of others. Without that, it would be doomed. So, he pursued the tacit acceptance of the Catholic Church (which was quite strong in Bavaria), and the active support of the military's officer corps. He knew he needed the military on his side, and eventually he got it. The failure of the Beer Hall Putsch came down to putting too much faith in the ability of a couple decorated military officers (Ludendorff and Goering) to get support from the military -- after his prison stay, he did a better job consolidating support among the military before flexing his political muscle.
In the US, as well, there's been a history of right-wing anti-democratic forces trying to harness the military to overturn governments they don't approve of. Most famous was the "Business Plot" -- a conspiracy by right-wing business powers to have the military oust FDR from office, in favor of a fascist dictatorship of some sort. Fortunately, Maj. General Smedley Butler did the patriotic thing and clued Congress into the plot and it never made it very far.
Could that kind of thing happen today in the US? I think some of the key ingredients are there, including a right-leaning tendency in the military. I think you can see trial balloons for that kind of plot occasionally coming from conservative politicians, like this:
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/14/gop...t_launched_coup_against_domestic_enemy_obama/
You can see what an early organizational effort for that kind of military treason could look like, here:
http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com/2009/03/oath-keepers-declaration-of-orders-we.html
That group calls for an oath, by members of the armed forces, that they won't obey orders to invade any state that "asserts its sovereignty" and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which the state entered the union. The group carefully avoids any outright calls for treason, but it's the kind of organizational effort one would expect in the very early stages of gathering together like-minded people with military connections who could later be radicalized to form the backbone of a military coup.
On a side note, one thing that's fascinating about the rise of the Nazi party is how leniently right-wing traitors were treated, in Weimar Germany, compared to far less disloyal lefties. On the left, whistle-blowers who shared information about the military's attempts to cheat the terms of the Versailles Treaty were treated extremely harshly, yet Hitler committed high treason against the state and only got a five-year sentence, serving barely over a single year of easy time before being pardoned. He had led an actual armed insurrection against the nation, in which many lost their lives, and had been completely unrepentant at trial (using it as an opportunity to rant about his own righteousness), and yet a year later he was a free man. This reminds me a bit of today, when whistle-blowers (like Bradley Manning) have the book thrown at them, and yet high crimes against the state, including arming our enemies (the Iran Contra conspirators) and betraying our intelligence assets (the identification of Valerie Plame) don't result in a day behind bars. It just seems a whole lot safer to skirt the law to the right than to the left.
One of Hitler's strengths was his recognition that a successful power grab would need the enthusiastic support of at least some existing power structures, and at least the tacit acceptance of others. Without that, it would be doomed. So, he pursued the tacit acceptance of the Catholic Church (which was quite strong in Bavaria), and the active support of the military's officer corps. He knew he needed the military on his side, and eventually he got it. The failure of the Beer Hall Putsch came down to putting too much faith in the ability of a couple decorated military officers (Ludendorff and Goering) to get support from the military -- after his prison stay, he did a better job consolidating support among the military before flexing his political muscle.
In the US, as well, there's been a history of right-wing anti-democratic forces trying to harness the military to overturn governments they don't approve of. Most famous was the "Business Plot" -- a conspiracy by right-wing business powers to have the military oust FDR from office, in favor of a fascist dictatorship of some sort. Fortunately, Maj. General Smedley Butler did the patriotic thing and clued Congress into the plot and it never made it very far.
Could that kind of thing happen today in the US? I think some of the key ingredients are there, including a right-leaning tendency in the military. I think you can see trial balloons for that kind of plot occasionally coming from conservative politicians, like this:
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/14/gop...t_launched_coup_against_domestic_enemy_obama/
You can see what an early organizational effort for that kind of military treason could look like, here:
http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com/2009/03/oath-keepers-declaration-of-orders-we.html
That group calls for an oath, by members of the armed forces, that they won't obey orders to invade any state that "asserts its sovereignty" and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which the state entered the union. The group carefully avoids any outright calls for treason, but it's the kind of organizational effort one would expect in the very early stages of gathering together like-minded people with military connections who could later be radicalized to form the backbone of a military coup.
On a side note, one thing that's fascinating about the rise of the Nazi party is how leniently right-wing traitors were treated, in Weimar Germany, compared to far less disloyal lefties. On the left, whistle-blowers who shared information about the military's attempts to cheat the terms of the Versailles Treaty were treated extremely harshly, yet Hitler committed high treason against the state and only got a five-year sentence, serving barely over a single year of easy time before being pardoned. He had led an actual armed insurrection against the nation, in which many lost their lives, and had been completely unrepentant at trial (using it as an opportunity to rant about his own righteousness), and yet a year later he was a free man. This reminds me a bit of today, when whistle-blowers (like Bradley Manning) have the book thrown at them, and yet high crimes against the state, including arming our enemies (the Iran Contra conspirators) and betraying our intelligence assets (the identification of Valerie Plame) don't result in a day behind bars. It just seems a whole lot safer to skirt the law to the right than to the left.
