In the United States, the events of 6 January 2021 are fresh again, with live hearings scheduled to be broadcast on several networks later today. Earlier this week, the Department of Justice brought sedition charges against Enrique Tarrio and 4 other Proud Boys, which, along with charges brought against Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers, make it appear that US institutions have held fast; an apparently disorganized state, operating in an atmosphere of economic crises, legal upheaval, cultural chaos, and widespread fear, seems to be working as it should after all. Perhaps a year from now, some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers will be in prison from activities of January 6th , where they might be expected to remain, depending on the nature of charges, appeals, and sentences, for awhile… who knows, perhaps until the November 2024 elections, or even later.
Liberal pundits like to compare the 6th January sacking of the US capitol to Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch (the failed attempt wherein the early National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazis, tried to wrest power in a coup in 1923 Munich). There certainly are similarities between January 6th and the Beer Hall event. Both the 2021 January and 1923 Munich events started with a march and ended in failure less than 24 hours after they began. In Germany, Hitler was sentenced to prison, where he served less than a year and where he resolved afterward to never again attempt power by violence. It took another 10 years (March 1933) for the Nazis to achieve their goal of national rule, and it occurred amid an atmosphere of… economic crises, legal upheaval, cultural chaos, and widespread fear.
But I often think the more relevant comparison with January 6th in the US and Hitler’s Germany should be made to events closer to the 1933 Weimar collapse. Perhaps the most startling thing about the 1933 Nazi electoral ascent to power was that it occurred while stormtroopers were being held in prison for violence that, only months earlier, had been widely condemned throughout German civil society. When you think about it, it’s rather mind blowing; the political & cultural shift was so extensive that people who were once enemies of the state became heroes literally overnight.
In the early hours of 10 August 1932, in Upper Silesia, an area on the southeastern border of Germany and only 3 kilometers from the Polish border, drunken members of the Sturmabteilungen – SA, or stormtroopers – left a tavern and went to the home of an unemployed miner named Konrad Pietrzuch, a known Communist sympathizer, and beat him and his brother. The brother survived, but Konrad was “…marked by 29 wounds… the corpse was extremely bruised around the neck. The outer carotid artery was completely shredded. The larynx displayed a large hole. Death resulted from suffocation as blood from the outer carotid artery poured through the larynx into the lungs… In addition, the neck shows dermabrasion that is definitely the result of a kick. Apart from these wounds, Pietrzuch is battered all over his body. He has received heavy blows on his head with a dull-edged hatchet or a stick. Other wounds look like he was hit in the face with a billiard cue.”
Concerned that the incident would result in outrage and might empower Communist-party propaganda efforts in a political climate already brimming with unrest,1 authorities confiscated the body and prohibited photos. Nonetheless, “the killing in Potempa quickly made nationwide headlines, thanks in large part to a new emergency decree ‘against political terrorism’ that had gone into effect at midnight on the night the attack was carried out,” according to a book by Daniel Siemens, an expert on the SA. “Armed with this anti-terror legislation, and in a desperate attempt to stem the wave of everyday political violence that was rapidly becoming impossible to control, the government of Chancellor Franz von Papen requested the death penalty for the perpetrators of these politically motivated murders.” Soon the perpetrators and other instigators were arrested, and 5 of them – the “Potempa 5” – were sentenced to death. Hitler condemned the verdict within hours of its announcement while the Nazi party line elevated the five “to heroes, extolled as brave men who were faithful to the Nazi cause and allegedly were supported by millions of fellow countrymen;” Goebbels got on the propaganda machine, Goering sent money to the murderer’s families, and soon von Papen reduced the charges against the Potempa 5 to life imprisonment.
Most of us know the general way in which things proceeded from there; Social Democrats and Communists, who together in late 1932 occupied more seats in the government than the Nazis, refused to cooperate with each other; in January 1933 Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor; in February 1933, a fire burned the Reichstag itself, and a decree was issued restricting assembly, association, property rights, and the press. The Nazis were still unable to win a majority of the electorate in elections of March 5th, but had enough in coalition with the Nationalists to form a government, which, with the Reichstag fire decree, was all they needed. Local stormtroopers, involved in the streets since the early 1920s, were now allowed to carry firearms, as municipal police throughout Germany either looked away or actively sided with rightist street violence. On March 23rd the Enabling Act was passed, which allowed the Nazis to issue laws without consent of the legislature.
Only 2 weeks after the March 1933 election, “as the first political prisoners filled the newly erected concentration camps in Oranienburg, Dachau, and elsewhere,” the condemned Potempa 5 were released from prison.
And just like that, the criminals of yesterday – indicted by a disorganized state operating in an atmosphere of economic crises, legal upheaval, cultural chaos, and widespread fear – became free heroes, literally overnight.
Notes
1. From Siemens: “In June and July 1932 alone, politically linked street riots, shootings, brawls, and assassinations in Germany caused the deaths of more than 300 people and injured more than 1,000. Within a political climate verging on civil war, the Potempa murder would probably not have made more than local headlines had it not been the first political felony to occur after President Hindenburg’s emergency decree on political terrorism came into effect.”
2. A mere 5 years earlier, it wasn’t forgone that the Nazis would be the ones to come out on top by 1933; in 1928 elections Communists had 10.6 percent of the seats in the Reichstag and the Nazis only 2.6 percent.
References
Siemens, Daniel, 2019. Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts. Yale University Press, 504 pages https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300246595/ref=ox_sc_act_image_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
Evans, Richard J., 2004. The Coming of the Third Reich. The Penguin Press, 622 pages.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EUQR9554LH41&keywords=evans+coming+third+reich&qid=1654748021&s=books&sprefix=evans+com+ing+third+reich%2Cstripbooks%2C166&sr=1-1