Column by Alex R. Knight III
Exclusive to STR
And not just in contrast to other tyrants and butchers of the 20th Century, when modern warfare and weaponry for the first time made the extermination of human beings possible on such a massive scale – I’m referring to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and a few others who were at least indirectly responsible (after all, it was ultimately the masses who consented to work under them and serve them who were directly responsible) for killing as many or more than the ill-famed German reichsfϋhrer. I’m talking about Hitler specifically.
True, Adolf did embark on his political career as a violent revolutionary in the failed 1923 Beer Hall putsch. His subsequent trial dominated the German press of the day, and catapulted the future fϋhrer to the status of a patriotic hero. He spent 265 days at Landsberg am Lech, ostensibly in “prison” for attempting to overthrow the Bavarian government (Hitler’s stay at Landsberg was more like a posh house arrest, where he was afforded numerous creature comforts, served lavish meals, and had the aid of Rudolf Hess in dictating his book, Mein Kampf -- which would go bestseller and turn Hitler into a millionaire). And upon his release, though reluctantly, he agreed to enter the Nazi Party into Germany’s then-fledgling democratic government. Instead of bullets, the young Hitler was now prepared to achieve his aims through ballots.
In 1933, a mere nine years later, the Nazis occupied an overwhelming majority of the German reichstag, and Hitler himself was reichschancellor. Subsequently, he parted ways with the vast majority of democratically-elected politicians in that he kept every single one of his campaign promises. From the rearming of the German reich, to the forced “reunification” of German-speaking peoples across Europe, to the conquering of other cultures in the name of lebensraum (or “living space”), to the systematic persecution and ostracism of Jews and other “undesirables” in a continent-wide policy . . . that ultimately (whether initially intentional or not) led to pogrom and Holocaust -- never can it be said that Hitler did not make good on his promises to voters. This was so true as to cause Dr. Joseph Goebbels in 1945 -- as the Russians closed in on Berlin, and the other Allied forces swept across western Europe – to declare of the war-ravaged German people: “I do not pity them. They gave us a mandate. And now they are reaping the grim crop of that mandate.”
To all of you who vote. To all of you who will make every excuse to apologize for the very existence of government. To all of you who will go to your own graves never once questioning that governments are a “necessity” and that chaos, bloodshed, and mayhem will result if they are ever abolished (as if those very monopolistic institutions themselves are not responsible for a gross largesse of the very same). To those among you who actually fuel the cogs of government with your hands-on physical effort and other labors. Those of you who tax, imprison, assault, steal, and kill in its name. To those of you who belong to and are rabid supporters of this backwards and utterly destructive cult. I ask you, one and all: How can you hate Hitler?
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