Hitler's Rise: 80 Years On

From USA Today:

"Germany marks 80th anniversary of Hitler's rise"

On the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to always fight for their principles and not fall into the complacency that enabled the Nazi dictator to seize control. Speaking Wednesday at the opening of a new exhibit at the Topography of Terror memorial documenting Hitler's election, Merkel noted that German academics and students at the time happily joined the Nazis only a few months later in burning books deemed subversive. "The rise of the Nazis was made possible because the elite of German society worked with them, but also, above all else, because most in Germany at least tolerated this rise," Merkel said. After winning about a third of the vote in Germany's 1932 election, Hitler convinced ailing President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint him chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933 — setting Germany on a course to war and genocide. "This path ended in Auschwitz," said Andreas Nachama, the director of the Topography of Terror.The Topography memorial is built around the ruins of buildings where the Gestapo secret police, the SS and the Reich Security Main Office ran Hitler's police state from 1933 to 1945. A stretch of the Berlin Wall along the edge serves as a reminder of Germany's second dictatorship under the Communists in the 20th century. Once chancellor, Hitler was able to use his position to consolidate absolute control over the country in the months to follow. About a month after being appointed chancellor, Hitler used the torching of the Reichstag parliament building — blamed on a Dutch communist — to strengthen his grip on power. He suspended civil liberties and cracked down on opposition parties, paving the way for the police state. By midsummer 1933, he had declared the Nazi Party to be the only political party in Germany. He later named himself "Fuehrer" or "Leader" of the country. The fact that Hitler was able to destroy German democracy in only six months serves as a warning today of what can happen if the public is apathetic, Merkel said. "Human rights do not assert themselves on their own; freedom does not emerge on its own; and democracy does not succeed on its own," Merkel said. "No, a dynamic society ... needs people who have regard and respect for one another, who take responsibility for themselves and others, where people take courageous and open decisions and who are prepared to accept criticism and opposition." Following the morning ceremony, Germany's Parliament held a special session in tribute to those who died under the Nazi dictatorship. Inge Deutschkron, a 90-year-old Jewish Berliner and writer, recalled Germans celebrating Hitler's rise to power as she addressed lawmakers. "Often, I couldn't get to sleep in the evenings and listened for footsteps in the staircase," she said. "If they were boots, I became afraid they could be SA men coming to arrest my father." Deutschkron's father managed to escape to England shortly before World War II, while she and her mother were hidden by friends in Berlin for the final years of the war. She recalled most ordinary Germans' indifference to the fate of Jews, who were forced to wear yellow stars. "The majority of Germans I met in the streets looked away when they saw this star on me — or looked straight through me," she said. And when she visited West Germany's capital of Bonn after the war, she recalled that most "had simply erased from their memory the crimes for which the German state had set up its own machinery of murder." Deutschkron remembered West Germany's first postwar chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, saying that most Germans opposed the Nazis' crimes against Jews and that many had helped Jews to escape. "If only that had been the truth," she said.

^ It has been 80 years since the German people elected Hitler their leader and followed him blindly for the next 12 years. No matter how many years pass the truth about what happened can not be re-written. The Nazis,World War 2 and the Holocaust happened with the help of every aspect of German society. Of course after the war every German had been an anti-Nazi and had never known about the crimes committed. Had the Germans won the war those same "anti-Nazis" would have been seen praising Hitler and acknowledging their help in his cogwheel of death. As it is the two Germanys after the war brushed aside what happened during the war. East Germany made itself out to be a victim while West Germany allowed former Nazis to live and work openly - including within the West German Government. It is only recently - now that the generation of Germans involved in the war and it's crimes are grandparents and great-grandparents  - is the unified Germany starting to fully and completely come to terms with its past. Of course for most victims and survivors it is too little too late. I hope that this trend continues because even though we always here the slogan "Never Again" it could happen again. Hitler came to power 80 years ago when the German economy was in shambles from forced war reparations and the world depression. Today Germany is facing a financial and political crisis with the European Union and the weakening of the Euro. While I do not believe the world would again sit back and allow the Nazis or the Germans do what they did in the 1930s-1940s there is always the threat of neo Nazis in Germany, Europe, the US and the world. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/30/germany-marks-80th-anniversary-of-hitlers-rise/1876727/