XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.liberalism   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
   Leon Degrelle   
      
   "We have the power. Now our gigantic work begins."   
   Those were Hitler's words on the night of January 30, 1933, as   
   cheering crowds surged past him, for five long hours, beneath the   
   windows of the Chancellery in Berlin.   
      
   His political struggle had lasted 14 years. He himself was 43, that   
   is, physically and intellectually at the peak of his powers. He had   
   won over millions of Germans and organized them into Germany's largest   
   and most dynamic political party, a party girded by a human rampart of   
   hundreds of thousands of storm troopers, three fourths of them members   
   of the working class. He had been extremely shrewd. All but toying   
   with his adversaries, Hitler had, one after another, vanquished them   
   all.   
      
   Standing there at the window, his arm raised to the delirious throng,   
   he must have known a feeling of triumph. But he seemed almost torpid,   
   absorbed, as if lost in another world.   
      
   It was a world far removed from the delirium in the street, a world of   
   65 million citizens who loved him or hated him, but all of whom, from   
   that night on, had become his responsibility. And as he knew-as almost   
   all Germans knew on January 1933 -- that this was a crushing, an   
   almost desperate responsibility.   
      
   Half a century later, few people understand the crisis Germany faced   
   at that time. Today, it's easy to assume that Germans have always been   
   well-fed and even plump. But the Germans Hitler inherited were virtual   
   skeletons.   
      
   During the preceding years, a score of "democratic" governments had   
   come and gone, often in utter confusion. Instead of alleviating the   
   people's misery, they had increased it, due to their own instability:   
   it was impossible for them to pursue any given plan for more than a   
   year or two. Germany had arrived at a dead end. In just a few years   
   there had been 224,000 suicides - a horrifying figure, bespeaking a   
   state of misery even more horrifying.   
      
   By the beginning of 1933, the misery of the German people was   
   virtually universal. At least six million unemployed and hungry   
   workers roamed aimlessly through the streets, receiving a pitiful   
   unemployment benefit of less than 42 marks per month. Many of those   
   out of work had families to feed, so that altogether some 20 million   
   Germans, a third of the country's population, were reduced to trying   
   to survive on about 40 pfennigs per person per day.   
      
   Unemployment benefits, moreover, were limited to a period of six   
   months. After that came only the meager misery allowance dispensed by   
   the welfare offices.   
      
   Notwithstanding the gross inadequacy of this assistance, by trying to   
   save the six million unemployed from total destruction, even for just   
   six months, both the state and local branches of the German government   
   saw themselves brought to ruin: in 1932 alone such aid had swallowed   
   up four billion marks, 57 percent of the total tax revenues of the   
   federal government and the regional states. A good many German   
   municipalities were bankrupt.   
      
   Those still lucky enough to have some kind of job were not much better   
   off. Workers and employees had taken a cut of 25 percent in their   
   wages and salaries. Twenty-one percent of them were earning between   
   100 and 250 marks per month; 69.2 percent of them, in January of 1933,   
   were being paid less than 1,200 marks annually. No more than about   
   100,000 Germans, it was estimated, were able to live without financial   
   worries.   
      
   During the three years before Hitler came to power, total earnings had   
   fallen by more than half, from 23 billion marks to 11 billion. The   
   average per capita income had dropped from 1,187 marks in 1929 to 627   
   marks, a scarcely tolerable level, in 1932. By January 1933, when   
   Hitler took office, 90 percent of the German people were destitute.   
   No one escaped the strangling effects of the unemployment. The   
   intellectuals were hit as hard as the working class. Of the 135,000   
   university graduates, 60 percent were without jobs. Only a tiny   
   minority was receiving unemployment benefits.   
      
   "The others," wrote one foreign observer, Marcel Laloire (in his book   
   New Germany), "are dependent on their parents or are sleeping in   
   flophouses. In the daytime they can be seen on the boulevards of   
   Berlin wearing signs on their backs to the effect that they will   
   accept any kind of work."   
      
   But there was no longer any kind of work.   
   The same drastic fall-off had hit Germany's cottage industry, which   
   comprised some four million workers. Its turnover had declined 55   
   percent, with total sales plunging from 22 billion to 10 billion   
   marks.   
      
   Hardest hit of all were construction workers; 90 percent of them were   
   unemployed.   
      
   Farmers, too, had been ruined, crushed by losses amounting to 12   
   billion marks. Many had been forced to mortgage their homes and their   
   land. In 1932 just the interest on the loans they had incurred due to   
   the crash was equivalent to 20 percent of the value of the   
   agricultural production of the entire country. Those who were no   
   longer able to meet the interest payments saw their farms auctioned   
   off in legal proceedings: in the years 1931-1932, 17,157 farms-with a   
   combined total area of 462,485 hectares - were liquidated in this way.   
   The "democracy" of Germany's "Weimar Republic" (1918 -1933) had proven   
   utterly ineffective in addressing such flagrant wrongs as this   
   impoverishment of millions of farm workers, even though they were the   
   nation's most stable and hardest working citizens. Plundered,   
   dispossessed, abandoned: small wonder they heeded Hitler's call.   
   Their situation on January 30, 1933, was tragic. Like the rest of   
   Germany's working class, they had been betrayed by their political   
   leaders, reduced to the alternatives of miserable wages, paltry and   
   uncertain benefit payments, or the outright humiliation of begging.   
   Germany's industries, once renowned everywhere in the world, were no   
   longer prosperous, despite the millions of marks in gratuities that   
   the financial magnates felt obliged to pour into the coffers of the   
   parties in power before each election in order to secure their   
   cooperation. For 14 years the well-blinkered conservatives and   
   Christian democrats of the political center had been feeding at the   
   trough just as greedily as their adversaries of the left..   
      
   One inevitable consequence of this ever-increasing misery and   
   uncertainty about the future was an abrupt decline in the birthrate.   
   When your household savings are wiped out, and when you fear even   
   greater calamities in the days ahead, you do not risk adding to the   
   number of your dependents.   
      
   In those days the birth rate was a reliable barometer of a country's   
   prosperity. A child is a joy, unless you have nothing but a crust of   
   bread to put in its little hand. And that's just the way it was with   
   hundreds of thousands of German families in 1932..   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)