Thu 12 Sep 2019, 06:58 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER by Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member.
Historians in episode 2 point out that Hitler’s dictatorship took only six months to complete. Although Chancellor, Hitler still had the Reichstag and the judiciary to contend with. He called an election and during the campaign, the Reichstag was mysteriously burnt down. The Communist Party was held responsible and Hindenburg granted Hitler emergency powers to round up political opposition. The Reichstag was suspended and over 25,000 Communists and SPD activists were incarcerated. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was described by the Nazis, as a re-education centre.
The historians then related the story of Hartinger, a deputy prosecutor, who was called to Dachau to investigate the deaths of four inmates (all Jewish). The commander and the guards were all SS, the most fanatical elements of the Nazi paramilitary wing, who claimed that the four were shot when attempting to escape. Hartinger, with the assistance of a medical advisor, had evidence that they had been executed. He wanted to bring charges of murder against the SS. However, his boss refused to sign it. Himmler, the head of the SS, took fright and sacked the camp commander and for a couple of months the killings stopped. Hartinger’s report on Dachau was buried and the killings resumed.
Hartinger’s report resurfaced at the end of the War and was used as evidence during the Nuremburg Trials. The story showed that, despite the illegalities of the Nazis ,the judiciary wouldn’t be holding them to account. Some of the historians pointed out that democracy is fragile and the experience of Germany in the early 1930s holds lessons for us today. In my view, the rise of right-wing populism is the price paid for the international labour movement’s failure to transform societies along socialist lines. However, reaction has not reached the level of the 1930s and the struggle for socialism can never be extinguished. As Ted Grant was fond of stating, ‘Out of evil comes Good’.
