How the Nazis Used Gun Control - NEVER AGAIN !

[U201491]

How the Nazis Used Gun Control
The Weimar Republic's well-intentioned gun registry became a tool for evil.
By Stephen P. Halbrook

How the Nazis Used Gun Control | National Review Online

The perennial gun-control debate in America did not begin here. The same arguments for and against were made in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany's Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.

In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for "public safety." The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.
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In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not "politically reliable."

During the five years of repression that followed, society was "cleansed" by the National Socialist regime. Undesirables were placed in camps where labor made them "free," and normal rights of citizenship were taken from Jews. The Gestapo banned independent gun clubs and arrested their leaders. Gestapo counsel Werner Best issued a directive to the police forbidding issuance of firearm permits to Jews.

In 1938, Hitler signed a new Gun Control Act. Now that many "enemies of the state" had been removed from society, some restrictions could be slightly liberalized, especially for Nazi Party members. But Jews were prohibited from working in the firearms industry, and .22 caliber hollow-point ammunition was banned.

The time had come to launch a decisive blow to the Jewish community, to render it defenseless so that its "ill-gotten" property could be redistributed as an entitlement to the German "Volk." The German Jews were ordered to surrender all their weapons, and the police had the records on all who had registered them. Even those who gave up their weapons voluntarily were turned over to the Gestapo.

This took place in the weeks before what became known as the Night of the Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, occurred in November 1938. That the Jews were disarmed before it, minimizing any risk of resistance, is the strongest evidence that the pogrom was planned in advance. An incident was needed to justify unleashing the attack.

That incident would be the shooting of a German diplomat in Paris by a teenage Polish Jew. Hitler directed propaganda minister Josef Goebbels to orchestrate the Night of the Broken Glass. This massive operation, allegedly conducted as a search for weapons, entailed the ransacking of homes and businesses, and the arson of synagogues.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler decreed that 20 years be served in a concentration camp by any Jew possessing a firearm. Rusty revolvers and bayonets from the Great War were confiscated from Jewish veterans who had served with distinction. Twenty thousand Jewish men were thrown into concentration camps, and had to pay ransoms to get released.

The U.S. media covered the above events. And when France fell to Nazi invasion in 1940, the New York Times reported that the French were deprived of rights such as free speech and firearm possession just as the Germans had been. Frenchmen who failed to surrender their firearms within 24 hours were subject to the death penalty.

No wonder that in 1941, just days before the Pearl Harbor attack, Congress reaffirmed Second Amendment rights and prohibited gun registration. In 1968, bills to register guns were debated, with opponents recalling the Nazi experience and supporters denying that the Nazis ever used registration records to confiscate guns. The bills were defeated, as every such proposal has been ever since, including recent "universal background check" bills.

As in Weimar Germany, some well-meaning people today advocate severe restrictions, including bans and registration, on gun ownership by law-abiding persons. Such proponents are in no sense "Nazis," any more than were the Weimar officials who promoted similar restrictions. And it would be a travesty to compare today's situation to the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Still, as history teaches, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

— Stephen Halbrook is a research fellow with the Independent Institute and the author of the new book, Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and "Enemies of the State."

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[Dunerunner]

Some lessons of history were taught with an unyielding hand and should never be forgotten. We take our freedoms for granted and in the blink of an eye they can be gone!!

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Here's my take on that, bro.. it started before the National Socialists came to power and there's a lot more to it than Americans want to spend the time learning

Articles: Gun Control, the Jews, and the Third Reich

Lesson? Those who would have absolute power must first disarm the opposition. Even the Bible warns "To take the house of a strong man ye must first bind his hands"

Now study WHO our political enemies are TODAY and you'll start to get the picture

 

[U201491]

Now study WHO our political enemies are TODAY and you'll start to get the picture

Socialists, Marxists and Communists ! and Now Islamics.

 

[U201491]

Here's my take on that, bro.. it started before the National Socialists came to power and there's a lot more to it than Americans want to spend the time learning

Articles: Gun Control, the Jews, and the Third Reich

That needs to be read.



In 1996, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the modern Olympics, the German government issued a set of four stamps. One of these celebrates Alfred and Gustav Flatow, cousins, who were gold medalists in the 1896 Olympics. Alfred took the first in the parallel bars and with his cousin also won gold for the German team's overall performance.

In 1932, Alfred Flatow registered three handguns, as decreed by the harsh gun control laws of the Weimar Republic that were drawn amid the violence and chaos of the aftermath of World War I. The Weimar Republican grew out of the ashes of the Great War. Perceived as an institution imposed by Germany's enemies, Weimar lacked political legitimacy and was vulnerable to insurrection.

The first assault on the Republic, however, came not from the right but from the communist left. Under the leadership of Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, the German Communists attempted to overthrow the government by armed struggle. The fragile government mobilized the Freikorps, undisciplined militias composed largely of veterans. The Freikorps brutally put down the communist insurrection and murdered its leaders. The Communists had also seized the government in Bavaria and the Freikorps succeeded in vanquishing them.

Hoping to stem further attacks on the state, the liberal Weimar Republic imposed Draconian gun control laws that made it punishable by death to carry a gun. The brutal and undisciplined Freikorps were given the task of enforcing these laws and did so with alacrity, even murdering nurses who carried firearms for protection against rape amid the post-war chaos.

The Weimar Ministry of the Interior made gun registration mandatory. The overall intention of the gun control laws was to disarm those who were making war against the state and each other. Inspired by gangster violence in Chicago, the Nazis and the Communists loaded up cars with thugs armed with Tommy guns and invaded each other's neighborhoods.

Like most attempts at gun control, the policy failed. Neither the Nazis nor the Communists gave up their guns, but law-abiding citizens like Alfred Flatow did and bore the consequences. Although the Weimar Ministry of the Interior worked to assure registrants that their information would remain safe, this proved to be an empty promise. When the Nazis took over in 1933, the information was culled for registrants who were deemed "enemies of the state," a euphemism for Jews, communists, and other political opponents.

Gestapo legal adviser Werner Best proposed to execute Jews who were found in possession of firearms. He had both ample precedent and experience to draw upon from the harsh gun laws and their brutal enforcement in the Weimar Republic.

In 1938, in preparation for Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), the Gestapo used the Weimar gun registration records to disarm Jews and focused on Jewish gun owners for deportation to concentration camps. Alfred Flatow fled Germany for the Netherlands, but when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, in May 1940, Flatow was on the Gestapo's list.

Flatow was arrested and sent to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, where he died from starvation on December 28, 1942. His cousin Gustav died in the same camp three years later.

Throughout their conquest of Europe, the Nazis encountered armed resistance by those who refused to accept defeat. Even the pitifully armed Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto put up meaningful resistance, as did the Jewish Bielski partisans in the forests of Byelorussia and Poland. Among the conquered people of Europe, where there were arms and munitions there were partisans who continued to fight.

Only in Germany was there no armed resistance, other than what came from the military. Would armed resistance on German soil have made a difference? No one can answer that with any certainty, but clearly it was a formidable concern for Werner Best and his Gestapo henchmen. Without arms there was no hope of meaningful resistance.

The issue of an armed populace resisting tyranny is why the Second Amendment exists. It was not written to promote hunting or target shooting. It was written to keep a check on tyrants both foreign and domestic.

A new book, Gun Control in the Third Reich, analyzes the manner in which the Nazis capitalized on the strict gun control policies of the Weimar Republic and used those policies to consolidate power and render the political opposition defenseless and the Jews hopeless.

It is far too facile to dismiss any comparison between the rise of Hitler and a threat from analogous policies in a viable democracy. As scholar Stephen P. Halbrook notes, historians have failed to see gun-control policies as the prelude to the rise of tyranny, even in Nazi Germany.

The Weimar Republic, despite problems in legitimacy and economic strangulation by the victors of World War I, was a struggling democracy with liberal principles. Its leaders thought that their policies of gun control would end the street violence between radical groups and promote political stability. The Weimar ministers did not comprehend that their gun control policies would pave the way for tyrants to direct and remove the political opposition.

Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote. His own electoral results paled in comparison to those garnered by President Paul von Hindenburg, and the Nazi party itself never received more than 37% of the vote. In the last free and fair German parliamentary elections of November, 1932, the Nazis actually lost 34 seats. Through orchestrated chaos and the incompetence of others, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. He stayed in power by eliminating future elections and preventing armed struggle against the regime. The fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic had created a tyrant, who now abused the pledge Weimar had made on the secrecy of gun registration.

Any real analysis of the rise of the Third Reich should contribute to our own debate over gun control, but of course, that is a pipe dream. When it comes to guns, the lines are tightly drawn. If you are among those who believe that you do not need a gun and no one else should have one, then there really is no room for debate. In this country, John Lott, Jr., through decades of exhausting empirical research, has shown that guns save lives. Yet, Lott's work hardly gets mentioned in the policy debate.

Jews, who should look at the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto and understand the value of resistance for the sake of preserving the dignity of the human spirit, are all too prone to utter the fatalistic Yiddish adage that translates as -- if it comes to this, nothing will help. In other words, when I will need a gun it will not do any good.

Such sentiments, in the light of Jewish history, are appalling, as are the attitudes that liberal Jews generally bring to the gun control debate. I am reminded of my great aunt Sifra, who stood nearly six feet tall and fought with the Bielski partisans. She died fighting; it was a noble death. She died a warrior's death, not an anonymous death as a nameless, faceless victim. That is what separates a hero from a victim. That is the difference a gun makes.

Read more: Articles: Gun Control, the Jews, and the Third Reich
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[fd15k]

So what was the rate of firearm ownership back then in Germany ?

 

[U201491]

So what was the rate of firearm ownership back then in Germany ?

That is irrelevant to the topic, and it was high before confiscation began.
Stop trying to divert the thread with non issues.

 

[fd15k]

That is irrelevant to the topic, and it was high before confiscation began.
Stop trying to divert the thread with non issues.

Give us some numbers, since you clearly studied the subject. I am trying to imagine how is Nazi model applicable to attempt at confiscation of 500+ millions of guns in the US today.

 

[U201491]

Gun Control & Genocide

<broken link removed>

Small excerpt from this site.

Shortly after the Nazis took power, they began house-to-house searches to discover firearms in the homes of suspected opponents. They claimed to find large numbers of weapons in the hands of subversives. [31] How many weapons the Nazis actually recovered may never be known. But as historian William Sheridan Allen pointed out in his study of the Nazi rise to power in one town: "Whether or not all the weapon discoveries reported in the local press were authentic is unimportant. The newspapers reported whatever they were told by the police, and what people believed was what was more important than what was true." [32]

Four days after Hitler's triumphant Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, the Nazis finally enacted their own firearms laws. Additional controls were layered on the 1928 Weimar law: Persons under eighteen were forbidden to buy firearms or ammunition; a special permit was introduced for handguns; Jews were barred from businesses involving firearms; Nazi officials were exempted from the firearms permit system; silencers were outlawed; twenty-two caliber cartridges with hollow points were banned; and firearms which could fold or break down "beyond the common limits of hunting and sporting activities" became illegal. [33]

On November 9, 1938 and into the next morning, the Nazis unleashed a nationwide race riot. Mobs inspired by the government attacked Jews in their homes, looted Jewish businesses, and burned synagogues, with no interference from the police. [34] The riot became known as "Kristallnacht" ("night of broken glass"). [35] On November 11, Hitler issued a decree forbidding Jews to possess firearms, knives, or truncheons under any circumstances, and to surrender them immediately. [36]

Nazi mass murders of Jews began after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Extermination camps were not set up until late 1941, so mass murder was at first accomplished by special S.S. units, Einsatzgruppen, on June 22, 1941. Working closely with regular army units, the Einsatzgruppen would move swiftly into newly-conquered areas, to prevent Jews from fleeing. In some cases, Jews were ordered to register with the authorities, an act which made them easy to locate for murder shortly thereafter. As noted above, most of the Soviet population had been disarmed by Lenin and Stalin or had never possessed arms in the first place. [37] Raul Hilberg, a leading scholar of the Nazi military, summarizes that

The killers were well armed, they knew what to do, and they worked swiftly. The victims were unarmed, bewildered, and followed orders. . . . It is significant that the Jews allowed themselves to be shot without resistance. In all reports of the Einsatzgruppen there were few references to "incidents." The killing units never lost a man during a shooting operation. . . . [T]he Jews remained paralyzed after their first brush with death and in spite of advance knowledge of their fate. [38]

How could Jews with "advance knowledge of their fate" allow themselves to be murdered? The authors suggest that

These Jews' passivity doubtless was the result of centuries of victimization in Russia. They had come to believe that being victimized was normal. In most cases in Jewish experience, the victimizers were satisfied after the first few victims. In such situations, resisting was likely to prolong the victimization, and thus to increase the number of victims. Most Jews did not realize that the Nazis were different. Most Jews did not realize the Nazis had no use for living Jews.

On top of this tendency to accept being victimized, twenty years of Communist rule--of which Stalin's terror had occupied ten years--had shown Jews that failure to obey orders was a fatal mistake. [39]

Although many Jews remained passive throughout the Holocaust, some did not. In 1943, the Nazis attempted to commence the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. [40] But as the Nazis moved in, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization opened fire. "[T]he shock of encountering resistance evidently forced the Germans to discontinue their work in order to make more thorough preparations." [41] The revolt continued, leading Goebbels to note in his diary: "This just shows what you can expect from Jews if they lay hands on weapons." [42] Although the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto were eventually defeated, the Warsaw battle was perhaps the most significant ever for the Jews, according to Raul Hilberg: "In Jewish history, the battle is literally a revolution, for after two thousand years of a policy of submission the wheel had been turned and once again Jews were using force." [43]

There were other Jewish uprisings; even in the death camps of Sobibor and Treblinka, Jews seized arms from the Nazi guards and attempted to escape. A few succeeded, and more significantly, the camps were closed prematurely. [44] The authors do not attempt to tell the complete story of Jewish guerilla resistance during World War II. [45]

The German chapter is the most successful in the book. The perpetrators and the victims of Naziism both left extensive written records, allowing Simkin, Zelman, and Rice to integrate their always-strong textual analysis of the gun laws with a discussion of the actual impact of the laws on the lives of victims. [46]



D. China


The China chapter is much less enlightening, mostly because the victims of Mao's genocide, unlike Hitler's, left much less of a record for Western historians to uncover. While many scholars agree that about one million people were murdered during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the number of people who were starved to death by Mao's communization of the economy from 1957 to 1960 ("the Great Leap Forward") might be as low as one million, or as high as thirty million. [47]

Mao, like Hitler, inherited gun control from his predecessor's regime. [48] A 1912 Chinese law made it illegal to import or possess rifles, cannons, or explosives without a permit. [49] The law was apparently aimed at the warlords who were contesting the central government's authority; Chinese peasants were far too poor to afford guns. [50] Communist gun control was not enacted until 1957, when the National People's Congress outlawed the manufacture, repair, purchase, or possession of any firearm or ammunition "in contravention of safety provisions." [51]

 

[simon99]

The Nazi regime is the liberal fantasy.....complete and absolute power to crush your opposition, 100% gun control, no means for anyone to raise up and oppose tyranny.

These kinds of threads bring to light those who would fight against tyranny and those who would go all brownshirt on us.

 

[U201491]

The Nazi regime is the liberal fantasy.....complete and absolute power to crush your opposition, 100% gun control, no means for anyone to raise up and oppose tyranny.

These kinds of threads bring to light those who would fight against tyranny and those who would go all brownshirt on us.

History does and will repeat itself. We must never allow the 2nd to fade. Never become disarmed.
Freedom will only remain if we all commit to that.

 

[U201491]

Gun Control and Genocide by Gary North
Gun Control and Genocide by Gary North

There is a reason why governments are committed to disarming their citizens. They want to maintain the monopoly of violence, no matter what. The idea of an armed citizenry is anathema to most politicians. After all, what's a monopoly for, if not to be used?

CONCLUSION

Genocide happens.

It doesn't happen whenever the would-be targets own guns.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

The Nazi regime is the liberal fantasy.....complete and absolute power to crush your opposition, 100% gun control, no means for anyone to raise up and oppose tyranny.

These kinds of threads bring to light those who would fight against tyranny and those who would go all brownshirt on us.

NOTE: 100% gun control of your enemies. The commies who are subverting our nation at present are always going to have armed bodyguards, mobs of the underclass who are armed and ready for wholesale violence in the furtherance of our destruction, and the party elite will always have free access to guns.. it is their opposition (US, those who would fight for what is left of the Republic) who they seek to disarm

What I am asserting is the same people (and their hangers on) the Germans were trying to disarm are turning the tables on US, NOW. Consider it "payback" as in reparations, no matter how loony it seems. They want to rule over us as dictators

The National Socialists were not "left" on a chart, they were racial Nationalists and anti communist. These are difficult to explain concepts but all that should matter to us is liberty and defense of our families

 

[Dunerunner]

You have to remember that Europe never had a 2nd Amendment. Gun ownership was for sport and very expensive at that. There were a few wealthy folks who may have had a collection of hunting rifles and shotguns, some upper middle class who had perhaps a shotgun they used for taking both upland game and big game animals. The weapons they had were not semi-automatic, they were single shot and bolt operated rifles and shotguns, and still the government saw them as a threat. The weapons were WWI era and crude by modern standards but still effective as sniping tools against a tyrannically oppressive regime.

In an effort to protect the population from the rampant gun crime of the time the Weimar authorities implemented austere gun laws which the lawless ignored and the following regime took full advantage of upon gaining power. The NAZIs gained power by promising security, economic equality and an end to crime. The Austrians, in the midst of an economic depression, voted to accept the NAZI regime thinking the prosperity of the Germans would then be in their future. They welcomed Hitler with open arms, and they were wrong. They didn't have the benefit of such profound minds as we Americans like Ben Franklin, who told us that "They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

America is somewhat unique in the world in the freedoms guaranteed us by our Constitution, Bill of Rights and the idea that we are a government of the people and that the power of government lies with the people and not the government or elected officials. It is a great experiment in whether people can successfully govern themselves or whether they will be ruled by those in power.

Sorry for the rant....

 

[U201491]

 

[U201491]

You have to remember that Europe never had a 2nd Amendment. Gun ownership was for sport and very expensive at that. There were a few wealthy folks who may have had a collection of hunting rifles and shotguns, some upper middle class who had perhaps a shotgun they used for taking both upland game and big game animals. The weapons they had were not semi-automatic, they were single shot and bolt operated rifles and shotguns, and still the government saw them as a threat. The weapons were WWI era and crude by modern standards but still effective as sniping tools against a tyrannically oppressive regime.

In an effort to protect the population from the rampant gun crime of the time the Weimar authorities implemented austere gun laws which the lawless ignored and the following regime took full advantage of upon gaining power. The NAZIs gained power by promising security, economic equality and an end to crime. The Austrians, in the midst of an economic depression, voted to accept the NAZI regime thinking the prosperity of the Germans would then be in their future. They welcomed Hitler with open arms, and they were wrong. They didn't have the benefit of such profound minds as we Americans like Ben Franklin, who told us that "They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

America is somewhat unique in the world in the freedoms guaranteed us by our Constitution, Bill of Rights and the idea that we are a government of the people and that the power of government lies with the people and not the government or elected officials. It is a great experiment in whether people can successfully govern themselves or whether they will be ruled by those in power.

Sorry for the rant....

That is a good rant and understated.
I see the same potential in those like Obama.
There is an evil core in him that he tries to hide
and does so very well. There are many like him and worse
that feel the Constitution is there for them to trample.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

The Scottish Highlanders were armed to the teeth and that was one reason the English went to extreme lengths to break their ancient culture. It's my heritage (Clan MacGregor) so I've studied it well

But indeed most of Europe was disarmed so that the peasants couldn't be revolting

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

James Madison

Madison was clearly speaking of state secession against federal tyranny.. empowered by an armed citizenry ready to retake their liberties. An idea whose time is well here

 

[Jamie6.5]

Time for this one again

 

[fd15k]

Madison was clearly speaking of state secession against federal tyranny.. empowered by an armed citizenry ready to retake their liberties. An idea whose time is well here

What I make of this though, is that 200 years ago, according to Madison, there was already a huge discrepancy in gun ownership between the nations (read lack of common gun culture). So 150 years later, how much gun ownership are we talking about in Germany, prior to enactment of strict regulations ?

 

[fd15k]

View attachment 74365

Let me ruin your parade once again

Claims

290 Indians Killed: TRUE. The actual number varies, but 290 is a figure sometimes used.
Indians were unarmed: MOSTLY TRUE. A few Lakota warriors had guns, but most of the Indians were unarmed.
Indians killed at school: FALSE. This event did not take place at a school.
Over 200 women and children killed: TRUE
They gave up their guns: MIXED. They were ordered to relinquish their weapons after surrendering. It is suggested that a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle, which led to shots being fired and the escalation of the event.

Was There an 1890 School Shooting Worse than Sandy Hook? - wafflesatnoon.com

Also I am inclined to believe that genocide of native population wasn't US government's improvisation but rather projection of the will of the people (read natives weren't people at the time) in those times.