Employment / unemployment statistics; Grosz unemployed a jobline ; the personal cost ; standing in line

Murder they wrote...murder one and two and three

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Ch 14 = 1930 : The problem: foreign investors recalled loans. The dilemma 302 [higher taxes or aussterity??]. ==> Degeneracy 304 [read quote from Isherwood]; and 306...inability to govern..

After the crash of the US stock market, no nation more vulnerable to contraction of trade and credit than Germany. Unemployment doubles in a month, wages shrink, benefits reduced. Increasing cynicism about the government. [306] The cabinet had abandoned the attempt to govern; permanent unrest [306]. Ultimately to the Article 48 imposed --rule by presidential decree[page 311]. And then the general election.

By 1930 Nazis had 1 million members 311 and some Thyssen support. The defeat of Strasser left Hitler with a private army of gangsters 316-7. Election night [315]. Moderate parties of middle lose to extremes at both ends of the spectrum violence and degenerary 319 [322] Communists with 77 seats, Nazi with 107, i.e., 184 of the 577. Who voted? 324ff. Increasing conflicts between rival political gangs. The story of Horst Wessel. [322:] many intellectuals seem to find a peculiar kind of satisfaction in the act of submission.

The Weimar constitution seen as something imposed by allies [recall Blue Angel], and contrary to German identity [324 and 326]. Growth of private armies [size of the SA 326, turbulence in Reichstag 326 ."All Quiet on the Western Front" debuts and then is shut down. Mahagonny..debuts to riots '..a city in which everything is permitted so long as one has the money to pay the price'.328...the last lines: "We cannot help ourselves or you or anyone!"

Ch 15 = 1931

The movie M:"I couldn't control myself!" and the challenge to law and order

The main theme here is the descent into brutality: [331] Note the challenge of the words "They [the Weimar police] unlike their successors regarded murder as murder, even if they did not punish the right wing perpetrators. But ...the Serial Murders: what do you make of the cases of

  1. Denke [who made several barrels of smoked human flesh, at least 30 victims, and sold to consumers],
  2. Grossman [I couldn't help myself] with16 victims, young girls and meat sold to butchers]and
  3. Haarmann with at least 26victims; who liked boys, and to "tear out the victim's throat with his teeth" [335] in a mindless rage. All characterized otherwise by appearing to be "normal"
  4. [337]Hitler: "Brutality is respected. The people need some wholesome fear. They want to fear something. They want someone to frighten them and make them sudderingly submissive...they need somthing that will give them the thrill of horror.

The Ringvereine: officially to help with rehabilitation of criminals, to keep suspicious under surveillance [339]

  1. In M the criminals and police cooperate, perceived as equal value
  2. Violence was commonplace, accepted as part of everyday life [340] implications? De-humanizing effect

the decline of law and order. even before the Nazis turned criminality into a system of government, there were instances of the Weimar authorities turning the law against the law-abiding

  1. the treatment of Ossietzky for exposing German military plans that violated the Versailles treaty. Note the judges ruling "the Army Command despite the Versailles treaty...considered itself obliged, from the point of imperious necessity above the laws, to carry out this reorganization in the interests of national defense." [347]
  2. note the quote from eric kästner on the period [348].

Ch. 16 = 1932

In the midst of the failure to form a stable government (5 elections in this year!), there were threats of military dictatorships, general stikes and civil war. Note the mechanation of von Schleicher to undermine the government of the moderates, the deepening depression (unemployment reaches one-third[365]; industrial production drops by a third [356]. Exports. Index of leading indicators

Hindenburg re-elected over Hitler, but only with the support of those for whom he had contempt, namely the Social Democrats and the moderate centrist parties [359]. Hitlers use of new media: film, radio and the airplane to every city. Anti-Nazi propaganda and another and again and another; pro Nazi and another. Four heroes; Hitler and the workingclasses; as new beginning; the savior

More on Nazi propaganda. Posters. Criticism: one, two, three, four, five and six

Significant steps:

  1. Two years of ruling by presidential decree--what Germany needs, says Schleicher, is a strong man [363]
  2. Removal of ban on Strom Troopers --over 300,000 strong [359]
  3. Undermining of the Prussian state government; Papen in the name of "law and order" assumes the governance, and the supreme court tolerates it [366]

Hitler: as head of largest party was entitled to form a government, his mission, to destroy Marxism, but note Hindenburg's attitude: [369] "his conscience and his duties to the Fatherland could permit him to give the entire governing power exclusively to the National Socialist movement, which wished to make one-side use of it."

Exodus begins...writers, artists, cinema, science 371 Grosz, Koestler, Einstein, Dietrich

374. Strike managed by the Communists and Nazis to shut down Berlin in November when salaries for transit workers to be cut in half.

Another Reichstag without a democratic majority: of 584 seats, extreme left and right control 296, more than the half, and are ready to bring down any centrist govt.

Ch 17 1933

Papen urges the Nazis be taken into the govt (Jan), but Hitler demanded full power to 'restore order' and expel all socialists and communists 379. Hindenburg resists, but a deal is worked out with Papen and Hitler.

Hitler appointed and the cultural purge begins almost immediately. Not so much against jews, but against independent minded intelligensia 385. Read on book burning.

Fackel; assuming power.

REad on 390