At the end of September my husband and I were in Munich and decided to tour Dachau as we felt a need to bear witness. We found the whole experience to be shattering, but one of the things that really hit home was a poster in the museum entitled:
The Road to Dictatorship.
It was a list of dates starting on
January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed the Reich Chancellor.
February 28 Fundamental rights are revoked (Reichstag Fire Decree)
March 9 State governments are forced into line and Frans Ritter von Epp, commissioned by the Reich takes over government affairs in Bavaria.
March 21 “Special courts” are set up for political offences: a decree is passed against spreading of “untrue claims” against the government (Treachery Law).
- the first concentration camps are established, with Dachau as the flagship (it really became the model for the large camps and was used to test out processes like the gas chamber — although Dachau’s chamber was only used for testing); they tended to shoot or hang the inmates. In fact, guards routinely forced inmates to step out of bounds when they could shoot them without repercussion.
March 24 The Reichtag gives powers to the government allowing it to pass laws and change the constitution without the approval of parliament (Enabling Act) only one political party voted against it, the Socialist (opposition) Party politicians had already been either arrested or gone underground.
Dachau began receiving prisoners, opposition party politicians and journalists en mass within less than 2 months after Hitler took power. By this date there were over 30,000 people locked up in Dachau. While some of those who survived the horrid treatment were released after a few years, when war was declared in 1939 they were rounded up and sent back to the camps.
April 7 Jewish and “unreliable” civil servants are dismissed under the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service”.
May 2 Trade Union offices are occupied and the unions crushed.
May 10 Public book burnings of works by leftist, democratic and Jewish authors.
July 14 NSDAP (National Socialist — Nazi Party) becomes the official party of the state, all other parties are banned or dissolve themselves.
As mentioned above, this all happened in the first 6 months of Hitler’s Chancellorship, however the second world war didn’t begin until six years later in September 1939 when he invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war.
Six years before the war Hitler prepared the camps for political rivals and ‘unfriendly’ journalists, then Jews, then disabled people, homosexuals, and anyone he deemed non-Aryan or inferior. Dachau itself became a sort of clearing house for hundreds of “work” and death camps scattered across Europe. They provided labour necessary to maintain the war machine, or were sent to die if they were deemed not useful. Many of the workers were literally worked (and starved) to death.
During the 2nd Debate on Sunday, I felt sick to my stomach when Trump said he would jail Hillary, and since then he has doubled down on that as well as saying he would investigate the FBI. He has also called for changing the laws so he can go after unfriendly journalists.
Ignorance of history can doom us to repeat it...this is why we must never forget! Please ask your friends and family who are voting for Trump how they could wish to destroy the country.
Note: I have a photo of the Road to Dictatorship poster and would love to embed it but I need your help. My photos don’t seem to be available to the Kos program.
