UPDATE: More imagination.
The most generous interpretation of her remarks is that she thinks the Nazis were allowed free speech by Weimar and that’s how they got into power. That isn’t true either, however. The Weimar Republic censored hate speech and particularly anti-Semitic speech. The Nazis came to power in spite of censorship, not because of a lack of it.
2 comments:
There seems to be an extensive but largely not directly expressed mythology in our time that the Nazis were a majority party in Weimar Germany which couldn't be farther from the truth, either. They briefly held the largest number of seats of any party in the Reichstag but were never even close to a majority, and were turfed out of that position after no more than a couple of years. Hitler really came into power by exploiting the anti-democrat elements of the Weimar Constitution, specifically that Chancellor was appointed by the President rather than being elected, and then by appropriating the autocratic authority of the President into the office of the Chancellor upon Hindenburg's death.
Did anyone point out to Al that Jefferson and Madison actually did have some experience in overthrowing a government, and Jefferson thought it might be a good idea to do it rather frequently?
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