Michael Chapman wrote:
Very much off topic is what follows.
Just as a point of information, I think Hitler's election
did not depend on fraud. I think he actually did have
a lot of popular support at one point . Why is a complex
question, but I believe he did, though of course
he was not above fraud if fraud was needed.
Yes, when my children used to come home from 'ra-ra'
civics classes, I used to pose the question: "In 1945, of
Churchill, Hitler, Stalin and Truman, which were elected
as leader in a democratic election?"
Hitler had 44% of the vote in 1933 (last election of Weimar Republic).
How the Weimar Republic was "de facto" abolished latest in 1934 (after
the death of Hindenburg, the President) is another story. (The Weimar
Republic was never abolished in an official way. Hitler just got a kind
of eternal "President/Chancellor". Of course this was not constitutional
at all, but potential opposition had been crushed before.)
Therfore, Hitler was certainly not elected to get into the function in
which he put himelf. (There was not any election after 1933. Media,
justice and even religious organisations were taken over by the NSDAP
party within a short time-frame, so what is even the point of the
question above? Hitler and Stalin were dictators, the other two not. End
of story...)
You could say that the Democratic parties were too weak in 1933. It is
untrue to pretend that Hitler was a kind of elected dictator.
(The Communists were also very strong in 1933, but of course they were
the first to be "taken out".)
I mean: If Merkel would receive a 50% in the 2013 election, it still
would be quite hard for her to "take over". Which means an absolute
mayority is a potential election result, but hardly a legal base to
crush other parties, abolish further elections etc.
Books have been written why the Weimar Republic crushed, but it didn't
happen because of the election results "per se".
Best,
Stefan
P.S.: Don't want to start a huge political discussion. But if I read the
"elected leader" question, I think this is supposed to put democracy
into question, but in a completely wrong way.
- NSDAP reached never a 50% share of votes. (44% was the maximum vote
share.)
- Also 50% would not have been enough to abolish the Weimar
Republic/Constitution in a legal way.
- Hitler's "Machtergreifung" was not exactly a "constitutional
process", and it was actually not supposed to be! Parliament members
(left parties) were arrested and killed already in 1933/34, so it was a
far-right revolution from the start. There were different militias all
around, and the President didn't stop this. (Hindenburg was too old even
to understand what happened. )
Therefore, Hitler was not the "elected leader in 1945". No historian I
know would support such a theory. Further, he and his fellows were
declared enemies of the democracy, from the start. They acted in a way
to get into charge, ruthless and certainly not caring at all about
constitutional procedures. (Of course pretending to act in a
constitutional way. And don't forget that Hitler had been jailed after a
failed military plot a decade before... The second time the
plot/revolution was still there, but far more hidden and slower.)
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