Politics: An epic collision of gun law and history

     The Republican presidential candidate isn’t the first to muddle history. He won’t be the last, either. But he has given us a poignant example of why politicians probably should avoid historical references.
     During a television interview, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Carson about his new book, A More Perfect Union (Sentinel; 2015). In the book, Carson wrote:

     German citizens were disarmed by their government in the late 1930s, and by the mid 1940s, Hitler’s regime had mercilessly slaughtered six million Jews and numerous others whom they considered inferior. Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating deceitful propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.

     Pressed about the passage, Carson remarked, “The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”     
     Blitzer responded, “Because they had a powerful military machine, as you know, the Nazis.”
     Carson said he understood.
     “They (the German army) could have simply gone in, and they did go in, and wipe out whole communities,” Blitzer added.
     “But you realize there was a reason they took the guns first, right?” Carson asked. 
     Carson was also asked about his remarks on the ABC talk show, The View.
       “I said most of the people in Nazi Germany did not believe in what Hitler was doing. But did they speak up? No," Carson said, "They kept their mouths shut. And when you do that, you are compromising your freedom and the freedom of people who come behind you. You have to be willing to stand up for what you believe in.”
      “Hitler won the election in Germany,” pointed out Joy Behar, a co-host.
      “There were people standing up ... the White Rose Society,” added Whoopi Goldberg, the show’s moderator.
      “Not enough,” Carson insisted.
                                                             ~~
      Let's unpack this. Basically, Carson’s views are as follows:

1. If not for gun-control laws and propaganda, the German populace could have and would have challenged Hitler’s army.
2. The German people “kept their mouths shut” rather than challenging Hitler.

     First, the context: Why did Germany enact gun control laws in the years following World War I?  And what was Hitler’s gun-control record? 

     “Following Germany's defeat in World War I, the Weimar Republic passed very strict gun control laws essentially banning all gun ownership, in an attempt both to stabilize the country and to comply with the Versailles Treaty of 1919,” according to Bernard E. Harcourt, of Columbia University, in the 2004 Fordham Law Review article, On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (a call to historians).
     In 1928, the German parliament enacted the Law on Firearms and Ammunition, “which relaxed gun restrictions and put into effect a strict firearm licensing scheme,” Harcourt wrote. Some argue, he added, that the regulations were “enacted precisely in order to prevent armed insurrection, such as Hitler's attempted coup in Munich in 1923, as well as Hitler's later rise to power.”
     Hitler came to power in 1933-34, and his regime demilitarized his political enemies with restrictive decrees, according to the Library of Congress article, Firearms-Control Legislation and Policy: Germany. But after doing so, a less restrictive weapons act in 1938 “exempted party hacks from licensing requirements and aimed at improving the combat skills of the population,” the article said.
     Harcourt pointed out that the gun laws of 1938 specifically banned anyone who was Jewish from getting a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. For others, the new gun laws were not so restrictive. “The Nazi gun laws of 1938 reflect a liberalization of the gun control measures that had been enacted by the Weimar Republic with respect to the acquisition, transfer, and carrying of  firearms,” he wrote. "In this regard, Hitler appears to have been more pro-gun than the predecessor Weimar Republic."

      Could righteous Germans have challenged Hitler’s army?  If armed, could the Jewish people have mounted a successful resistance? 

     Consider that the German government (even before Hitler) had been preparing for another war -- and in a thorough way. The country evaded the Versailles Treaty by “dismantling and hiding large amounts of weapons -- including 350,000 rifles, 12,000 machine guns and 675 howitzers -- in secret arms caches throughout Germany,” writes Tim Ripley, military journalist, in the book, The Wehrmacht: The German Army in World War II. (Routledge; 2003).  
     The Versailles Treaty also limited the German army to 100,000 men. But by September 1939, Germany invaded Poland with 1.5 million troops, recounts the BBC article, 1939, Germany invades Poland.
     As the war began in 1939, Great Britain, Poland and France together had superior industrial resources and population, recounts Encyclopedia Britannica online. But the German Army, the Wehrmacht, was known for training, discipline and armament. It was regarded as the “most efficient and effective fighting force for its size in the world.”  
     In contrast, by the end of 1939, approximately 202,000 Jewish people remained in Germany and 57,000 in annexed Austria, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. (This is not to say that there were 259,000 people of fighting age and ability -- but men, women and children of various ages.)
    The museum’s website points out that during the war, there were attempts to resist. Notably, pockets of fighters managed to hold the Germans off for a month during Poland's Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1942. In the end, however, the Germans reportedly killed 7,000 Jews and deported another 7,000 to the Treblinka killing center. The German army lost approximately a dozen men.  [Read the museum’s article here.] 

    Did most Germans keep their mouths shut while actually disapproving of Hitler, as Carson suggests? 

    Hitler’s political career began after World War I, according to the The Historical Encyclopedia of World War II” (MJF Books; 1989). In 1921, he became the leader of the Nazi Party, and his political views were popular, the book explains:
  

  "Anti-Semitic racism thus acquired a strong momentum, particularly among members of the lower middle class – clerks, shopkeepers, etc, -- who suffered badly in every economic crisis. Anti-Semitism offered them an explanation, in apparently valid terms, of a social and economic system that steadily reduced their status and standard of living. Even more, it flattered them by attributing to their mediocre lives a ‘higher moral value’ than that of the rich and ‘upstart’ Jews.

  “Hitler and the fledgling Nazi Party appealed powerfully to this sentiment after 1918 by identifying the Jew as the cause of Germany’s defeat and the political and economic disasters that followed."  

                    
     In 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor. After the death on Aug. 2, 1934, of the country’s president, Paul Von Hindenburg, Hitler became president, chancellor and head of the army. An election followed aimed at validating Hitler's power grab. Voters were asked to make their approval unanimous, The New York Times reported. 
      “Eighty-nine and nine-tenths percent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 percent indicated their disapproval.”
     It wasn't easy to object. Opponents "braved possible consequences by answering 'No,'" the story reported. Other voters "made their answers ineffective by spoiling the simplest of ballots. There was a plain short question and two circles, one labeled 'Yes' and the other 'No,' in one of which the voter had to make a cross," the story reported. "Yet there were nearly 1,000,000 spoiled ballots."
     The story also pointed out that more Germans actually voted against Hitler in 1934 than in a vote in 1933. [Read the story here.]
     Even so, anti-Semitism was widespread. Writing about Herschel Grynszpan, the 17-year-old who walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot a secretary to the Nazi ambassador in 1938 (an event that the Nazis used as justification for a rampage known as the Kristallnacht), journalist Dorothy Thompson described the young man's desperation this way:
     "He could not leave France, for no country would take him in. He could not work because no country would give him a work permit." The teenager had read the newspapers and:  

all that he could read filled him with dark anxiety and wild despair. He read how men, women and children, driven out of the Sudetenland by a conquering army -- conquering with the consent of Great Britain and France -- had been forced to cross the border into Czechoslovakia on their hands and knees. ... He read that the Jewish children had been stood on platforms in front of classes of German children and had had their features pointed to and described by the teachers as the mark of a criminal race. He read that men and women of his race ... had been forced to wash the streets while the mob laughed. ...

       -- Found in the book, American Cassandra, The Life of Dorothy Thompson, by Peter Kurth (Little, Brown and Company, 1990).
     The White Rose movement, mentioned on The View by Whoopi Goldberg, was indeed one of the few German groups to speak out against the Nazis. Leaders of the group -- basically students guided by a professor -- were eventually captured and executed. (See a story on the Holocaust Memorial Museum website.)

    Sources:

• American Cassandra, The Life of Dorothy Thompson, by Peter Kurth (Little, Brown and Company, 1990).
• BBC article, 1939, Germany invades Poland. 
• Fordham Law Review:  On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (a call to historians), By Bernard E. Harcourt, University of Chicago.
• The Historical Encyclopedia of World War II, (MJF Books; 1989).
• Library of Congress: Firearms Control Legislation and Policy -- Germany.
• The New York Times: Hitler Endorsed by 9 to 1 in Poll on his Dictatorship, but Opposition Is Doubled, Aug. 20, 1934.
• PBS, America and the Holocaust: Kristallnacht.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: German Prewar Expansion.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Holocaust Encyclopedia.
• The Wehrmacht: The German Army in World War II, by Tim Ripley, (Routledge; 2003).

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