As I said, it was a question I posed to my children ... in effect to get them to question naïve simplifications.
Your response Stefan is neither naïve nor simplistic, if I got an answer half-as-good as that I would have been happy (I'd probably have been happy if I thought my children's teachers' teachers could give an answer half-as-good as that ;-)> Regards, Michael > 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.) > > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20121011/1eb323f9/attachment.html> > _______________________________________________ > Sursound mailing list > Sursound@music.vt.edu > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound > _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
