From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: In response to Jon Livesey, also stand on EC, Maastricht and the
Date: 28 Sep 92 22:22:17 GMT
Organization: sgi

In article <1a77r8INNir6@early-bird.think.com>, sandee@Think.COM (Daan Sandee) writes:
|> 
|> While Germany (in the Weimar Republic) was still a functioning parliamentary
|> democracy, the largest electoral success of the NSDAP was around 35%.

In Europe, it's quite often the case that no single party gets
more than fifty percent of the vote.   That's why there is 
usually no Constitutional requirement for them to do so.

In European Constitutions, what qualifies a party to form a
Government is control of the legislature, often through an
alliance with other parties.

The Nazis were the largest single party in the Reichstag, and
they were able to persuade enough other members to support them.
That made Hitler's appointment perfectly constitutional by the
standards of the day.

Indeed, I can't recall any modern German Chancellor whose party
had > 50% of the popular vote, except perhaps Adenauer once.  
Can someone correct me on that?

|> He got his power through the Ermaechtigungsgesetz (Empowerment Act) of 1933.

No, he got his power as I explained above, and then he extended it to
a supposedly temporary dictatorship in 1933.   But the vote in the
Reichstag was overwhelmingly in favour.   Constitutional again.

|> After that, political opposition was destroyed and any further electoral
|> exercises were meaningless.

That's correct.   After 1933, democracy is not longer the issue, but
up until that point, it certainly is.

|> It is true that he had the approval of the German people for his actions
|> (including starting WWII and persecuting the Jews) but to call it 
|> DEMOCRATIC backing perverts the meaning of the word democracy. 

Afraid not.  It just enrages people who want to insist, as an 
article of faith, that democracy can never lead to this kind of 
result.

|> You might then apply the term just as much to any popular dictator - 
|> there've been plenty of those.

Maybe.  It depends on whether they came to power through 
Constitutional means, and whether they managed to get the
extensions that made them dictators through the legislature,
or perhaps by a plebiscite.   If I recall correctly, Hitler
got massive support in at least one national plebiscite.


|> 
|> Finally, why *corruption* rampage ? Rampage, yes, but what was so corrupt
|> about it ? Neither Hitler nor Napoleon were paid to do for what they did 
|> and at least Hitler didn't amass any private wealth, which is actually 
|> quite unusual for dictators. And Napoleon was a lot less corrupt than
|> the French monarchy was before and after his reign.

You just have too limited a view of corruption.   What was corrupt
about Hitler's - and Stalin's - regime, was the way in which they
were gradually able to turn the whole of society into collaborators.
In the end, all power and advancement in these societies depended on
the individual collaborating with the regime, and spying on and
denouncing those who did not collaborate.   Corruption didn't
consist of pocketing loose change, but of corrupting the whole
fabric of society.

In Hitler's Germany - and Stalin's USSR - dictatorship was not
carried out by one man, or even by a small clique, but by a vast
section of the population which was willing to support the regime
in order to get personal favours, career advancement, lucrative
contracts, permission to publish, military commissions.

Unfortunately, democracy does not guarantee that this can't
happen.   All it takes is for the mainstream parties to become
so thoroughly discredited that a would-be dictator can use the
electoral system, and the frustration of the voters, for his own
purposes.

jon.

[I took out talk.religion.misc.   Hope that's all right]
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