Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in unused condition. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> More than sixty years ago Nazism collapsed leaving fifty million dead in a Europe ruined and economically on its knees. Slowly the scars healed memories faded two generations were born who know almost nothing about Nazism and who understand Hitler only as a met aphor. But one name lives on a name that has come to universally symbolize oppression and terror: the Gestapo. On January 30 1933. Adolf Hitler who had long been considered a politi- cal agitator became Chancellor of the Reich. Three months later (Dachau opened on March 22) the first concentration camps opened their gates to welcome political dissidents such as the Social Democrats and all Germans suspected of not adhering to the state’s racist and totalitarian ideology. Within a few months Hitler Goering and Himmler’s lieutenants formed the steel framework of the regime: the Gestapo. Every totalitarian regime. whether it claims to be right or left relies upon a powerful political police force to ruthlessly crush dissent. The existence of an opponent however weak is incompatible with a totalitarian system. Nazism gave birth to the most inhu- man the most perverse and the most murderous police system ever conceived by man. In order to secure its power the German people had to be brought to heel. Coming from an old and deeply rooted civilization highly cultured endowed with a solid legal tradition the people of Germany could not be easily tamed despite their innate taste for discipline. Other nations’ eyes and legal barriers from Germany’s own laws stood against it. Within a few months the unions every political party and every independent organization be it for the arts sports or youth was disbanded or absorbed by Nazi organiza tions. There was still the law and the courts to which the victims of the Nazis turned and the Nazis had enough sense not to try to suddenly assault the German legal system. On the contrary they gradually lifted legal obstacles in order to destroy them one after another. In 1933 Goering the founder of the Gestapo relieved the Home Secretary by decree of all authority concerning the Gestapo. It became a solely self-regulated organization. Between 1934 and 1939 the Nazis passed a series of laws making it impossible for ordinary justice to exercise the slightest control on the activities of the Gestapo and the S.S. On January 30 1934 a law took the police forces away from the authority of the “laender” and placed them under the jurisdiction of the Reich. On April 20. Goering handed over control to Himmler and then every German police force uniformed and plain clothes. (SP)