Hitler Gradually Consolidated Power, Part Four/Final

Note: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other fascists have used rallies to spread hate, to keep their supporters motivated and to get their own extremely weak egos the affirmation they so desperately needed. Trump has used his own rallies for such things, but he has also turned non partisan events with the Boy Scouts, law enforcement, the military and business people into political events for himself. Fascists LOVE chants, and the chants of "Duce! Duce! Duce!" for Mussolini, "Sieg heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg heil! for Hitler, have been turned by Trump into audiences chanting, "Lock her/them up!," depending upon the target of his remarks at the moment.
 
For "Part Three," here is the link: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/05/hitler-gradually-consolidated-power_23.html

As I noted in "Part Three," just before President Paul von Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler had the cabinet issue a new law combining the chancellorship with the presidency for when the 86 year old president passed away. With Hitler now Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, all military personnel were gathered in their various locations, where they swore an oath to Adolf Hitler, personally, not to Germany or to the German people. This oath proved to be a major problem for many in the military, including the highest officers, who saw disloyalty to Trump.... I mean Hitler, as "treason," although now Trump is doing the same thing, by declaring it is treason to investigate him.

By late 1941 his armies in Russia were halted before the gates of Moscow, Leningrad (the name for St. Petersburg for much of the communist era), and the naval fortress of Sevastopol in the Crimea, and Hitler, never one to take responsibility for his own decisions, replaced the commander-in-chief of the army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch. Hitler replaced him with himself! So Hitler was now Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht (armed forces), commander-in-chief of the armed forces and commander-in-chief of the army. When would he fire a captain and take charge of a company himself?

Hitler's power was complete and throughout his time in leadership, he and the Nazis used fear to keep people in line by using the powers of the German state to punish enemies and make examples of anyone who dared to challenge Hitler's policies, or threatened the regime in any way, just as Sturmabteiling (SA) leader Ernest Röhm and other SA leaders were murdered or sent to concentration camps, and young brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, and their friend Christoph Probst, were beheaded for distributing antiwar and anti-Nazi leaflets. As the German military was staggered by defeats on a continuing basis beginning in late 1942, and more and more disturbing reports of terrible atrocities swirled around, the oath to Hitler became a shield to hide behind for many military personnel, but not all, and some gallant officers actually joined with existing anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi Germans to come up with a way to rid Germany and the world of Hitler, in hopes of saving their country. *

During the course of the war, Nazi "political officers" (Nationalsozialistische Führungsoffiziere= National Socialist Leadership Officers) were put into units to help ensure the troops were following Nazi ideology of being strong in the face of adversity and to make strict and harsh treatment of designated groups, like Jews and Gypsies, acceptable. After the failed attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944, the traditional military salute was replaced by the Nazi salute in the armed forces,** and the head of the infamous SS, Heinrich Himmler, was put in charge of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer), a part of the German army, not the Nazi SS. As the war neared its end on German soil, the Nazis couldn't break their old habits, and they formed special squads to look for and execute Germans for abandoning the war effort and going against the Nazi slogan of "final victory" (Endsieg), even when Allied or Soviet troops were advancing just blocks away through the ruins of German cities and towns. In those closing weeks and days of the war, tens of thousands of people, military and civilian, and from all sides, were killed or maimed just to keep Hitler's nasty ass alive. This was the man who called himself a "genius." Let's see... what American fascist leader has recently claimed to be a "genius?"    

* For a bit more on the German resistance to Hitler, here is the link: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/08/german-question-part-one-hundred-fifty_29.html 

** The Nazi salute was/is called "Hitlergruß" in German (Hitler greeting), and it was always used in Nazi organization, but the German armed forces had used the traditional military salute. Wouldn't Trump LOVE to have a salute named for him? I have a salute FOR him, an extended middle finger! 

WORD HISTORY:
Swirl-While the origin of this word is in question, it seems likely to be related to "swarm," a word from the Germanic roots of English. This likelihood means the word goes back to Indo European "swer/suer," which meant, "to buzz;" and was likely used for bees and other insects (thus, "swarm"). I can find no Old Germanic form, but it "could" have been derived from a form of "swarm" later, and there were/are forms of words in Germanic like Old Norse "sverra," meaning "to swirl, to whirl", and "swarra," "to whiz," Swedish dialectal "svirra," "to crackle (of fire)," Danish "svirre," "to buzz or to whiz," Norwegian "svirla" "whirl," German "surren," "to buzz, to whir," and German also has "schwirren," meaning "to buzz, to whir," but it seems to have been taken from Low German "swirren" about 250 to 300 years ago, which referred to the sound made by a swarm of insects, and Dutch "zwirrelen," "to swirl, to whirl." The noun form "swirl" first seems to have been used in the first part of the 1400s, as "swyrl," in Lowland Scots English,^ and it "might" be a borrowing from the Dutch verb, as it meant "an eddy, a whirlpool," or from the Norwegian dialect form.

^ "Lowland Scots" is now classified by linguists as a separate language from English, although it developed from English, and is, therefore, a Germanic language, not a Gaelic language from Celtic, like Scottish Gaelic (also called, "Scots Gaelic").

"Real Americans" Are NOT Nazis

Updated somewhat 10-8-20

We hear or see statements claiming, "Real Americans ...," and then comes an action or thought that the person seems to believe are "un-American." What is a "real American?" I can't define it, but I can tell you, it indeed isn't a Nazi, or any fascist for that matter, as many thousands of American soldiers fought and died to help defeat the Nazi Nutcase In Chief, Adolf Hitler, and his strutting Fascist ally, Benito Mussolini, as well as a string of other fascist, or right wing authoritarian and militarist regimes also allied to the Nutty Nazi, most notably, in Japan. Many thousands of other Americans were wounded, and none came home without some physical or mental scar from having fought to help roll back fascism.

More than 400,000 Americans died during World War Two, and more than 600,000 were wounded.   

We aren't a perfect country, and we never have been. "Some" Americans are so insecure, they can't ever admit that there are or were injustices and flaws in the nation from its very birth. The American Civil War showed the terrible divide in just such attitudes over the major injustice of slavery in the United States, as the northern states and the southern states didn't just decide to have a war out of boredom. That war cost somewhere between 600,000 and 750,000 military deaths, and an unknown number of civilian deaths, most which would have been in the Confederacy. No, the United States isn't perfect, but Americans have worked, and continue to work, to correct our flaws, no matter how painful it may be. Fascists, while trying to portray themselves as strong, only show themselves as weak, as they can't even admit to problems in the nation, let alone join with others to fix those problems. Such weakness and insecurity brought about Hitler's Gestapo and Mussolini's OVRA, both organizations of secret police used to subdue critics.* The United States now has a president who wants to use the Justice Department and that department's FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) to go after his critics and political opponents. Will Americans let this happen? Did so many Americans die to let fascism "trump" us? (Pun intended!) No..... "real Americans" are not Nazis! FIGHT FASCISM! VOTE to defeat Trump AND his Republican accomplices who have sat by and watched this nearly four year anti-democracy spectacle take place.

 * "Gestapo" was an abbreviation for "Geheime Staatspolizei" (Secret State Police), and "OVRA" was an abbreviation for "Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo" (Organization for Vigilance and the Repression of Anti Fascism).   

WORD HISTORY: 

Err-This word goes back to Indo European "ers/ars," which had the notion, "move around, wander about." This gave Latin the verb, "errare," meaning, "to wander around;" thus also, "to lose one's way;" thus also the figurative, "to make a mistake, to err." This was passed to Latin-based Old French as "errer," with the same meanings, and this was borrowed into English in the very early 1300s as "erren," meaning, "to wander off, to stray, to make a mistake (thus also, "to commit a sin"). In those times, many English infinitive verbs were formed with an ending of "en," which didn't require "to" to be added to the infinitive, but English verb conjugations later changed, and this then produced infinitive forms like, "to err," "to go," "to say," as the "-en" was dropped. Close relative German still uses "-en" to form infinitive forms (to match the above English forms: "irren," "gehen," "sagen"). "Err" is related through Indo European to former English words, "ierre," a noun meaning, "wrath" (from the idea of "going astray from normal"), and an adjective of that same spelling meaning, "confused, gone astray, wrathful," and the verb, "iersian," meaning, "to be angry," but also, "to provoke to anger." German "irren," mentioned above, is a close relative through Germanic, and there are more relatives in other Germanic languages.