I just read an interesting article called When Democracy Failed - 2005 by Thom Hartmann. In it Hartmann re-tells how Hitler rose to power on the back of fear of terrorism, corporate welfare, propaganda and media control, pre-emptive strikes against other nations, and painting all dissenters as unpatriotic and un-German.
The process was kicked off by an act of terrorism on February 27th 1933 - the firebombing of the German parliament building (Reichstag) by Marinus van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe confessed to the crime under torture, and was tried with four communists who were acquitted. Van der Lubbe was executed by beheading January 10th 1934.
Interestingly there is a "2/27 Hitler knew" conspiracy theory (cf. the "9/11 Bush Knew" theory) about the events claiming the Reichstag fire was actually set by agents working for Hermann Göring and that Lubbe and the rest were set up. Whether or not they were, the rest, as they say, is history. As Hartmann points out, at the moment it is we the people who now have the choice of letting history repeat or not.
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